What Andela’s Fieldwork Says About The Ideal Work Model For African Devs

Andela, the global network for remote engineering talent, has revealed in a new survey that 91 percent of African developers chose a fully remote or hybrid model as their preferred working environment. The survey, which featured over 1,000 developers from across 12 African countries, was carried out to better understand and share the DNA of technologists in this often under-represented region. 

It’s well known that Andela has been an important part of the African tech landscape since 2014, positioned among the pioneers of distributed teams and remote-first operations on the continent. Today, the company has connected thousands of talented technologists with world-class companies, starting in Africa.

Interestingly, whilst the majority of respondent devs prefer remote or hybrid models, 49 percent of engineers surveyed felt that their employers were well prepared to support remote work, indicating that companies across the world are still struggling to realign their workplace policies and systems to better support new ways of working. These and more and contained in the 2022 Andela African Developer survey which can be downloaded here

Some key findings;

• 91 percent of the respondents chose fully remote or hybrid working as their preferred work environment [51 percent fully remote, 40 percent hybrid and only 8 percent indicated that they wanted to work on-site, full time]. 
• 39 percent of respondents indicated that they already work fully remotely, while 35 percent work remotely some of the time
• Working with global teams is a high priority for respondents with more than 50 percent already working for global or international organisations. 
• While 90 percent of developers want to work fully or partially remotely, the readiness of companies to support this work environment is lagging. 
• When asked about the benefits of working remotely, 57 percent cited better work-life balance, 32 percent cited productivity, 30 percent creativity, 20 percent control over their schedule. Saving money on commuting – commonly identified as one of the key benefits of remote work – was only identified by less than 10 percent of respondents.
• More than 85 percent of developers indicated that they have some or complete control over where they work with half of the respondents indicating that home was their preferred place of work followed by co-working hubs (30 percent).
• The pursuit of education and commitment to technology was evident among developers as almost 65 percent of respondents started coding before they turned 20.
• Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Blockchain are, according to respondents of the African Developer Survey, the three technologies that will have the biggest impact in the future.

More than 1,000 developers from over 12 countries participated in the survey, but the majority of them came from Nigeria and Kenya, two key IT hubs in the evolving technology landscape in Africa.