Welcome to our new Harambeans at Work podcast series, where we explore the development of Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to enable innovation and scale. This podcast series aims to democratize key insights in order to empower ordinary Africans to do extraordinary things.
On today’s show we meet up with legendary entrepreneur Jeremy Johnson who is the CEO of Andela which he co-founded with Harambean Iyinoluwa Aboyeji who joined our Alliance in 2010. Andela is a pioneering startup that trains and builds distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software engineers. By investing in Africa’s most talented software engineers, Andela helps companies around the world to solve the technical talent shortage and build high-performing distributed engineering teams, working from their tech campuses in Lagos, Nairobi, and Kampala. Just earlier this year Andela has raised $100 million Series D funding led by former US Vice President Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.
Johnson shares on the journey of Andela from idea to scale, recognizing that the essence to the creation of Andela was due to the desire to see the world differently. Johnson and his co-founders understood that talent was equally distributed, and therefore questioned why opportunity was not. He expounds on the principles of entrepreneurship that allow for true innovation and growth highlighting that most paramount to any startup journey is the non-existence of a blueprint. Johnson acknowledges that Africa’s youth bulge as the continent’s greatest asset, believing that the continent is to see an explosion of companies and startups that are going to scale.
This podcast has been brought to you by Harambeans in partnership with Youngpreneur Media.