Brigitta Bihari Code of Africa’s journey started in 2017/18 when two of our Co-founders were mentoring young entrepreneurs – most of them based in Rwanda.
The rising eco-system in the ICT sector pushed and accompanied by the government, with educational institutions like the African Leadership University (ALU), Carnegie Mellon University or Andela on-site in Kigali, Rwanda showcased what most of us Europeans don’t have on the radar: A tech ecosystem on the move, nurtured by the individual eagerness to achieve something great, world-class academic institutions and highly supported by the government in one of the safest countries on the continent.
The idea behind our company is generating positive social and economic impacts while accelerating these through a profit motive – by making the tech talent hub East Africa (with focus on Rwanda and Kenya) available to the demand market in the DACH region.
We bootstrap CoA because we believe in sustainable growth and want to maintain the freedom to make our own decisions – even if that means going a slower pace. Each new project pays the salaries of the next talents we take on board, while we provide reserve funds for training measures, health insurance or individual saving schemes. The experience since our start in
March 2019 confirms our assumptions and concerns. We continue to grow “organically” – through our cash flow.
Photo: Code Of Africa
To create a sustainable pool of software developers we do not stop with creating a physical location in Kigali that meets modern work environment standards for the young professionals of our domestic entity.
To offer a broad service portfolio as well as to have excellent talent market access, we teamed up with Rwandan tech startups Awesomity Lab & Octan Group at first – forming mutually beneficial partnerships. We got to know the team of Awesomity Lab when supporting them during their contract initiation and negotiation with Volkswagen Group South Africa – resulting in
the development of the first application (“Move”) for the Rwandan integrated mobility concept, launched in 2018.
Similar to Octan Group the young software developers from Awesomity have been mainly focusing on developing tech solutions addressing domestic challenges in diverse industries such as Education, Health or Business Management. Their focus is not only to enable the local society to actively take part in the digitisation by the products and services they develop.
For us, it was key that both our Rwandan partners have a special passion for training and upskilling young tech enthusiasts, giving back to the local tech community and elevating it – this 100% matches to Code of Africa’s goal to foster the East
African ecosystem by developing the sector and contributing to overall economic growth and job creation.
You can read the full article in the Outsourcing Destination Guide Rwanda, which is available for free download at www.outsourcing-destinations.org
About the author: Anja is a buying expert with more than 15 years management background in the Apparel Industry. During this time, she established successful international business partnerships and setup strategic supplier portfolios. Anja is used to create robust performing networks and negotiate complex partner agreements with a distinct cross-cultural sense due to her extensive experience with partners in Asia, Eastern Europe and Northern/Eastern Africa. She brings intuition and excellent feeling for consumer requirements & market trends.
After many years in the corporate world she decided to step out and setup her own boutique advisory firm – focusing on business enablement in emerging countries. During that time, she was lucky to discover the innovative and creative spirit in East Africa, especially when it comes to Software Development. The idea of Code of Africa was born!
