Connecting Africa Podcast: S3 Ep. 4 – Africa's future as a tech talent powerhouse

In this Connecting Africa Podcast, we speak to Utiva CEO Eyitayo Ogunmola, who has built a technology workforce development company that trains Africans with premium technology skills for the global job market and partners with global companies to hire its graduates.

Ogunmola was a guest in season one of the podcast. He returns to tell us how the company has evolved since we last spoke in 2021, and to share his views on how to make Africa a powerhouse for tech talent.

Utiva launched in 2018, and has already trained over 120,000 people in 19 countries, helping them gain technology skills and connecting them with jobs at both local and global companies like Google, Amazon, Samsung, Uber, TikTok, Mastercard, Flutterwave, Paystack, Stripe and many more.

Ogunmola started off by telling the team about how the company has grown from first offering training in data science to now having courses covering ten different digital skills disciplines, including cloud computing, cybersecurity, business analysis and product management.

"We understand that the market is very excited about these coding and non-coding skills," he said.

The CEO believes that international companies are often looking for high-level senior talent rather than junior talent, which poses a problem for Africa's youth, who are just getting into the tech world.

"The industry today is really flooded with a lot of junior, inexperienced talent so the responsibility is on us to really find a way to accelerate the growth of these [entry-level] talents," Ogunmola said.

The team spoke about solving the problem of human capital development and global hiring problems through upskilling local students in the most sought-after tech areas.

"At scale, we realize that there are new skills that we need to unravel, skills like virtual assistance roles, graphic design roles, digital marketing roles, customers service roles, IT support and troubleshooting. These skills wouldn't be in the top ten at Utiva so now we have to take a step back and create curriculum and learning models around these types of skills, because at scale these are the skills that employers are hiring for," he explained.

The conversation covered how Africa can compete with other major outsource markets like India or the Philippines despite the infrastructural challenges that African workers often face due to power and Internet issues or lack of infrastructure. Ogunmola's view is that "companies don't care about your challenges, they just want to do business."

"We're not giving excuses for whatever challenges we have in Africa; we have to find solutions to those challenges. So, the first thing that we do is to be very transparent with our employers and partners that say this is Africa, this is not India yet, we are not there yet," he said.

"We are very transparent to enable them to understand that we've got challenges here, but on the other side, we also let them know that if you give us the opportunity, Nigerians and Africans are very aggressive people, they'll get the job done," he added.

Utiva requires its talents to continuously upskill and keep training, even when they have been hired for a role, and requires them to complete 30 minutes of learning every day to continue building their capacity.

"We have to continue to train them in communication, empathy, listening skills, and all these things. Because ultimately, the deal breaker is the capacity and not necessarily the infrastructure," he said.

The conversation covered the challenges of starting a business in Africa, the lack of government support and high costs and how Utiva is navigating these issues.

He acknowledged that the road has not always been easy, but he believes the company will be profitable in three to four years' time despite these challenges, citing the importance of delayed gratification and long-term thinking for success.

The rise of Africa's middle class

Ogunmola outlined why he sees Africa as the best talent market in the future and how it can become a leader when it comes to outsourced tech jobs because of Africa's young population and growing middle class.

"This continent has an advantage. Number one is the fact that if you invest in the African market, then you're investing in the market that has a fast-rising population of young people. The African population, in terms of the middle class, has grown in the past 30 years to almost 330 million people. Remember that for us to position the African talent market for these global opportunities we really have to target the middle class," he said.

"When you think about it, more than 34% of this continent's population, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB), is the middle class, more than 65% is young people, and the purchasing power of Africans is also increasing," Ogunmola added.

He said that Africa aspires to be a great continent and its people aspire to be educated and to be ready for jobs.

Utiva CEO Eyitayo Ogunmola. (Source: Utiva)

"I'm very positive about the continent, but you also look at the numbers. Nigeria's GDP alone has increased five times, and that means that there is global investment coming into the space. So, with a lot of focus on the African market right now, we can't afford to lose focus on the talent ecosystem, because everything rises and falls on talent.

"We can't have the world trying to help Africa without Africans standing up to save ourselves. One of the best ways to do that strategically is to do that from the talent side of things, and that's why we are in this game," he explained.

The role of the African diaspora

Ogunmola had an interesting take on Africa's tech professionals that had left the continent and the often-negative connotations of this "brain drain."

He believes it's actually a good thing for Africans to leave the continent and use the money they make overseas to help fund Africa's rising tech ecosystem.

"To be honest with you, my perspective is, we don't want them to come back. They are doing a lot of good from outside. The voice internally is literally dead without a voice from outside. The best of Africa is inspired by the best of us that are outside the continent," he said.

"You can't raise a million dollars as a startup in Nigeria without some form of support from Africans in the diaspora. Where do you get a million dollars as a Nigerian or as an African at home, who's going to give you that money? You have to raise it from outside. So, you can't train 100,000 people without a lot of support from outside the continent," he added.

He said there are Africans in Washington, DC, and London lobbying for more investment into Nigeria and Africa in general.

"There are Africans at some of the best universities rewriting the narrative and creating a new perspective about Africa. Every time I see an investor that talks to us, it's always a recommendation from an African in the diaspora, every time – someone at Harvard, someone at MIT, someone at Stanford, saying I know this startup in Nigeria that I think you should be talking to," he shared.

"What I find interesting [is] once an African stays ten years abroad, they just want to invest everything back home. So, we need to let our people thrive. Mobility is part of the characteristics of human beings. We need to let our people go travel around the world, learn, get the exposure, and then transfer back the knowledge to us," he added.

The discussion shifted to the quality of outsourced roles and the type of skills that are sought after, be they "low-tech" skills or "high-tech" skills. Ogunmola spoke about continuous learning for local talent and how they can grow into different roles as they keep upskilling themselves.

He said there are five key "high-tech" skills that are most sought after: cybersecurity, data science, software engineering, cloud computing and blockchain.

Growing female tech talent

The team also discussed the rise of female tech talent and how Utiva has seen its female learners thriving and working harder than their male counterparts.

"Women are more aspirational now in Nigeria than men. That's what our figures tell us. For every course, five women complete the course before you find one single guy completing the course. Right now, we have more female trainers than male trainers in Utiva's internal team. Seventy percent of Utivans are actually female and about 75% of trainees into our program are women," he explained.

Utiva recently raised $500,000 in funding from the Dutch government, with a focus specifically on women, to create an apprenticeship program and support women that are working to continue to learn new skills.

"It looks to be like women hold the future of the tech ecosystem," he added.

Utiva's training partners include Microsoft, JICA, Act Foundation, MIT Solve, Facebook Accelerator, Halcyon Incubator and JCI Nigeria.

Other partners include the HP Foundation, which backed Utiva with $50,000 to train women and girls in Kenya with premium technology skills. Binance Africa also worked with Utiva to train more than 300 women and girls in blockchain technology and tech skills.

The podcast concluded with a discussion on Utiva's business model and whom the company wants to work with going forward to grow the tech training space in Africa.

Want to find more Connecting Africa Podcasts? Check out our Podcast Archive here.

This season we will be speaking to more startup founders and interesting personalities in Africa's tech ecosystem, so stay tuned for the new episodes dropping soon.

If you want to catch up on all the previous episodes you can find the podcast on Apple Podcasts; Spotify; Pocket Casts or find other podcast platform options on our main page on Spotify for Podcasters.

You can also find the podcast hosts online here:

Paula Gilbert (@paulajgilbert)

Tobi Lafinhan (@TobiLafinhan)

Matshepo Sehloho (@tsokamatshepo)

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