Iyin Aboyeji on Nigerian youth and Change

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In a recent Medium post, E! talks about the power of the Nigerian youth, technology and hardwork.

We had good reason to believe it was possible. In Nigeria alone, over 43% of young people are are unemployed without any hope of a job or a decent wage because the education system had failed to equip them with the right skills. Yet, around the world, we saw technology companies were having a hard time finding talent. At his previous company 2U, Jeremy struggled to find entry-level Salesforce developers even when he was willing to pay over $100,000 a year for the talent. He wasn’t the only one in the technology industry facing this chronic talent shortage. Amazon’s 16,000 open IT jobs and Accenture’s 14,000 open IT jobs painted a very vivid picture of a global skills gap that was getting even worse. These are all jobs that could be done from anywhere in the world provided one had a computer, an Internet connection and the requisite skills that any brilliant and driven young person could acquire in a relatively short period of time.

However, even if they do not, they must know that we young Nigerians won’t stop believing in the promises that we have made to ourselves; that we will take every opportunity to better ourselves, our communities and Nigeria with or without their permission because technology has empowered us to.

What is Change? - Medium

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Just read the post and it’s just a bloody PR stunt. It’s the same manifesto Infosys, Wipro and Accenture were selling to the Indian “youths” back in the days. All these hardcore capitalist don’t care about the poor guy spending 3 hours entring the bus for the free lecture, all they see is dollar signs. They all know that in the true spirit of capitalism the guy will open shop opposite Andela once his eyes opens and come back to bid for the same contracts at a lower price. All these companies are outsourcing to the folks at Andela because it’s no longer sexy to use India, Malaysia and the Philipines or should I say their eyes have now opened at that side of the world. Infosys is now competing with Accenture in the UK to bid for contracts that’s the Accenture used to subcontract to them.

The question that needs to be answered is why can’t Amazon find 16,000 Americans to fill the posts or Why couldn’t Accenture get 14,000 people from Nigeria and Solmalia to fill those posts? At least they have an office in Nigeria and have good share of the local lucrative contracts?

It’s because these companies don’t give a f**k about the youths - American, British, Indian and most importantly Nigerian - they only care about profit.

As Andela is not being funded by the Vatican, I can conclude they are not a charity and most importantly that they don’t give a flying f**k about their minions. If labour becomes cheaper in Togo - Andela Togo will be believing in the future of the Togolese youths.

Now let the personal attacks on me begin…

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They saw a gap and filled it. The emotional calculations of it does not really translate into any solutions. Business has never been pretty; not expected to be. I only hope for when Nigerians solve Nigerian problems with no foreign aid or investment…but this is a journey, we are not there yet.

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Your ideas are your own but I don’t do PR stunts.

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So I think it’s simple enough… Nigerian youths have no job, skill nor experience needed to build their own “Info Sys”. Andela comes along, sees an opportunity and decides to take it. The last time I checked, Andela didn’t say they were doing anything different from what you said.

  1. Andela takes in developers and pay them while on the job/training
  2. Train them as well as expose them to big enterprise projects. (which gives them the real experience needed to build their own “Infosys”)
  3. Andela also acknowledges the fact that people will leave to build their own stuffs
  4. In India and the Philippines like you rightly mentioned, the likes of Accenture has grown local dev talents to the extent that it has become saturated and “less sexy” for companies to outsource projects to them.
  5. Well in today’s Nigeria, I think point number 4 is what we are looking to do.

Finally, no one really cares about anybody. The devs at Andela don’t care about Andela anymore than Andela care about them. @iaboyeji is only doing his job by writing about what he believes in.

Peace

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I think of Andela as a marketplace for technical talent. What I in fact, hope to see in the coming years is Andela for non-technical talents and low skilled persons.

I don’t work and know anyone in Andela personally and also this is not me taking sides as it may suggest. Andela to me is perhaps one of the most interesting companies we have had very recently. Eff it, it is the most interesting in fact.

See, unemployment is a real big deal in this part of the world. 50-100,000 graduates compete for 20 Chevron/Exxon/Shell jobs. Exams are even written outside the country. I knew this personally during my NYSC as an Electrical Engineering graduate.

Here comes Andela with a model to impact graduates with technical skills, pay them for training them and still manage to have a business. Let’s just pray the succeed and hopefully we have more persons with guts to replicate and extend their models to other fields like hard core engineering, teaching, carpentry and anything else.

I like to think we may be proceeding into a new era of how companies get work done. Think about how many persons these days will rather do gigs than having a full time day job. This is Andela exploring what the future will look like.

You raise valid point about Andela profitting off people. Erm but is that not the whole point of starting and running a business? Make money, and profit. When you get a day job, it is actually a case of your employer profitting off your hours. They have never posed to be a non-profit or charity. The thing is just that, their business is so good for the society while it is making money, that it almost seem like it is charity.

According to Peter Thiel, there are businesses that pose to be good to the society and there are some that are actually good. Andela seems like the latter and we should be rooting for them and hoping for their success. Their success in my mind, will force their model to be copied in the other areas which means more actual good companies.

They hold no prisoners. I know of a girl that was there for just 3 months. She joined the class, and left off. PR stunt or no, its part of the business and @iaboyeji needs not defend himself. Before anything else, think NIIT. Andela is like this company giving the unemployed the second chance and so by all means, we should be rooting for them.

On a personal note, if there is one company I wish to have founded or part of , my top 3 list will be Andela, Andela, Andela.

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Dude, from what I read, the post is masked as a epistle of change with key references to - “There is something special about the Nigeria youths…” And it’s this believe that is driving Andela.

All I did was to point out that the epistle is a PR stunt with a Martin Luther King undertone to disguise high level of hypocrisy. Let’s call a spade a spade, it’s of no benefit to the Nigerian youths as they are cherry picking the best brains in Nigeria to solve US problems for a profit while local challenges continue to compound.

Buisness like these are parasites and actually damages the progress of the local “youth” that they are envangelising.

To be clear I have nothing against their buisness model as its another Tony Soprano styled hustle after all. If they IPO I will buy shares so that I can join the gang of folks buying Ferraris at the expense of Nigeria’s progress.

But don’t go around preaching that you are doing Nigeria a favour asyou are doing more harm than good. After all it’s just my own opinion and I will stick to day job as an Agbero as I can never be shortlisted for Andela in a million years.

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This actually needs to happen sooner than we think and thankfully many crazy people like me now leading the way. Zest.com.ng for handyman staff. Czoid for drivers. Wave Hospitality for hospitality. Supergeeks for Hardware maintenance. The list goes on and on. Here is to hoping more crazy young people come out of the wood work and naysayers like Tola can rant on here while making 0 impact.

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When you work for Exxon Mobil, what do you think happen? Or for Google. Or any multinational where you could potentially earn $100,000 PA upwards.

The post sure have the undertone of we are saving the world and shit. Same with any leader of most companies. Zuck, Larry, Dorsey, Musk when they talk, like to present their companies as something important as if the destiny of the universe depends on it.

For now their model may be biased towards supporting foreign ventures. But man, those in their books are perhaps the ones that can pay enough to make a business for them. Local ventures might not just be able to afford Andela programmers. And if for one thing, think about how many startups the graduates would found on completion of the program or the ones that will be absorbed by mature or new internet companies.

That to me, is a good thing, no matter how you slice it.

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Dude I don’t care about the Nigerian Youths like you claim to do. If my Agbero buisness is cheaper somewhere else I will move it there. Oh by the way, I can’t move taxing bus drivers overseas as all I can do expand my territory using violence and bloodshed.

See we are both in the same line of buisness - which is pimping out vulnerable people for profit. The difference is I don’t go around with a messianic complex claiming to have the interest of Nigerian youths in mind.

I am not trying to be provocative and laid down some valid points which the community needs to address. If you can’t answer them, please move on and don’t tell me to come back when I have employed 100+ people…oh that’s the God complex again!

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Let me answer your questions :

To do jobs you actually have to have the skills. It takes time and money to recruit and train young people to have the skills. Some people don’t have the patience or don’t believe our young people are worth the resources and so they don’t invest in them.

Andela on the other hand invests 10k-15k in every fellow to make them good enough to go on projects with our partners and then continues their education over the next 4 years. Amazon can’t find 16,000 americans to fill the post because they don’t exist. Accenture can’t get 14,000 people from Nigeria because they don’t exist. However, Andela believes with a bit of training, we can provide talent to go into these jobs.

We care about these young people. We believe we can do well and do good and in fact long term doing well means doing good.

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Bless your sweet little soul @Tola
Like @iaboyeji said, go and start your own charity.

Same cherry picking is how MIT and Stanford works, that is why 4 of the top 10 most valuable companies in the world are (co)founded by their alumni and the software industry which contributes up to 3% of the US GDP is filled with their graduates. History has proven that if you give enabling environment and opportunity to the smartest ones (especially when resources are limited), they’ll ultimately create huge value for everyone else.
But macro economics is not really your strongest suit now, is it?

Besides, Andela only has about 100+ youths, you can show us your philanthropic, benevolent genius with the other 10million+ others.

Edit: the 7% figure earlier was actually for India (8%)

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I think.
Its just a provocative post, with no meaningful premise.

Let it go. :smile:

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Thanks a lot for validating my opinion. So it’s not profitable for Amazon and Accenture to train up fresh graduates because they are not profitable. So they outsource it to BPOs because it’s cheaper as its all about cost. Afterall the youths are the problems of the Goverment and not Amazon or Accenture that lobby around for Goverment contracts while paying next to nothing corporation tax so that the Goverment can invest in their youths.

Now Andela is now part of this big BPO machine which causes more harm than good - Google it. Please don’t disguise it as a gain for the Nigeria youth as there is proof for about it’s pitfalls. Go ask China about why it did not allow it and the gains of not trading he future of your youths for peanuts.

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Some point here. Now what could be the solution to the problem you persive? Gov should ban Andela? Educate us :smile:

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You are speaking a whole lot of sense actually.

While Andela is a beautiful initiative and we should have more of it, making it look like they are doing something good for Nigeria, blah, blah, is a narrative that is getting old.

What Andela is doing is selling cheap labour to industries that are looking to cut corners while Andela gets paid well for it. Everybody wins, but in the long run, the product (the devs) will get the short end of the stick. Hopefully, they do not get into ridiculous contracts at wherever they are eventually hired that will stop them from renegotiating when they discover their true value.

That being said, it is better - way better - than letting these talents waste and not amount to anything in the tech field.

So while I am a big admirer of Andela, the whole we are doing something for fellow Africans narrative (hero complex?) is just over reaching. But that;s just me.

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I will suggest you listen to the folks talking to you privately and stand down as for each comment you make, you are just digging a bigger hole for yourself.

I think the thread will speak for itself. I have raised my opinions and you have raised yours. So let the passerbys make their own conclusions.

By the way, I am not faceless and I am at Ojota Garage in case you want to have rationale conversation without personal attacks. I don’t mind supplying the pepper soup, beer and weed to calm you down. My email thread about this issue with my fellow Agberos seems to be more constructive and productive than this thread.

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Dude I am not running away as we are not having a debate and just going around in circles and it just getting pointless. As for your invite, I have to kindly decline. Seen it, been there and got the Tshirt.

But if you want to take me up on my offer, If you reach Ojota Garage, there is just one Tola, any other one is a counterfeit. I will keep Andela in my mind for my young area boys considering a career change. But wait they can’t even apply as most of them don’t even have SSCE. Damn, I guess they are stucked with me for now. Notwithstanding, we will come and steal your Andela graduates for our more sophisticated and high level cons - at least we won’t need to spend 10 - 15k training them and they already have backdoor access to your Top US clients. :grinning::grinning::grinning:

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You don’t need SSCE to apply to Andela! You can simply apply at apply.andela.com :slight_smile:

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In summary, you’re a disgruntled ex-student :grinning:

What were your goals before “seen it, been there, got the Tshirt” :grin: