Building for African builders

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Hey 👋🏽 Caleb here.

I’m in Croatia this week talking about tech ecosystems at Shift, a developer conference hosted by Infobip - a Tech Safari partner.

This week’s edition is about developers, their growth in Africa, and why Africa is the next big developer hub.

Let’s get into it!

In 2006, Ezra Olubi and Shola Akinlade shut down a computer programming exhibition in college.

They’d written a script that let them control other computers remotely.

When they remotely ejected a disc from a PC, the crowd went crazy.

African tech is built on the backs of people like Ezra and Shola - engineers building solutions and scaling them to millions of people.

And there’s a growing number of them on the continent.

Silicon Valley may be home to 478,000 engineers, but Africa has nearly double that - with 716,000.

This surge has happened quietly over the past decade, and it's no coincidence.

Why? Three reasons:

• A super young population: Africa’s median age is just 19.7 years - much of the continent's population has grown up with tech.

• Self-taught devs: Many young African developers are learning to code from anywhere - as long as they have internet access.

• Thriving tech ecosystems: From Lagos to Nairobi, cities across the continent are nurturing tech hubs and startups, with developers at the core.

Behind the scenes of this growth are communities.

These are groups of engineers committed to putting each other on.

They teach each other software skills, help new learners and connect each other with jobs.

Sometimes, they grow out of universities, other times, they start as friend groups or work circles.

But once in a while, they come from an unlikely place.

The Unicorn that started in a village

In 2001, Silvio Kutic - founder of Infobip - made a decision that changed his life forever.

On his first day at work, he quit and bought a one-way ticket back home to his parents in Vondjan - a village with 3,000 people.

He realised he didn’t want to be an employee for life - so why start as one at all?

So, he put his computer science degree to use and started building software.

In 2006, he struck gold.

He built mGate - a tool that lets businesses send text messages to their customers.

Mobile phones were on the rise, and text messages were a way for telcos to stay connected to their users.

Infobip built APIs that made that happen.

If you’ve ever changed your Facebook password and received an OTP, odds are you used Infobip.

Today, Infobip is a $10 billion company, powering SMS verification for companies like WhatsApp, Uber, and Stripe.

And their HQ is still in the same village.

But early on in their journey, Infobip crossed paths with Africa.

Coming to America Africa 🌍️ 

Early on, Infobip saw something in Africa that few others did — potential.

Africa was having a telco boom at the same time as Croatia.

Being in a small market, Infobip needed to go international from day one, and the communication tools they’d built were a perfect fit for Africa.

So, they moved in - serving banks, telcos and huge companies on the continent.

Today, they serve 40 major African banks and telcos - and have 11 offices across Africa.

But they didn’t stop there.

When startups came around in Africa, Infobip opened its toolkit for developers to build communication into their products.

In the words of Marijan Čipčić, Infobip’s community manager, "Africa is stacked with talented and innovative engineers and we’re excited to support them.”

Infobip didn’t just offer them tools though - they built communities too.

In 2022, they started Infobip Connect, a series of developer meetups, across Africa.

These meetups were about:

• Building connections - between developers, tech leaders, and startups.

• And giving developers access to tools, and training that were often out of reach.

It started small but quickly expanded to some of Africa’s largest tech hubs → Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, and Egypt.

And they didn’t just build their own community in Africa - they supported other ones too.

Infobip partners with Tech Safari, helping us put on events and expand our community to different countries on the continent.

You can see their logo at Tech Safari mixers, and even catch their team around, connecting with founders, investors, and operators across Africa.

And last year, they won a ‘Devrel Oscar’ in London, for their work building developer communities in Africa.

A meeting of two underdogs

Infobip has come a long way on the continent - supporting builders and building communities.

But Croatia and Africa’s developer ecosystems have always existed in parallel.

This week, I attended Shift, a massive developer conference in Croatia - hosted by Infobip.

The event brought over 4,000 people in tech and 600 companies together to celebrate tech.

And the voices of African developers were heard.

I spoke with other tech leaders from across the world, and here’s what I learned.

1. The tech scenes in Africa and Eastern Europe have a lot in common.

Ten years ago, there was a stigma that came with building tech companies in Eastern Europe.

It was hard to raise money or even convince investors that there was an opportunity.

But with the growth of companies like Croatia’s Infobip and Romania’s UiPath, that story has changed.

Africa is going through the same story arc, and it could become the next tech frontier.

2. Africa will be the biggest developer hub in the future

Africa is the fastest-growing demographic in the world, with most people growing up on the internet.

It’s already showing up in the numbers, but the developers of the future will come from Africa.

If you’re holding off on investing in African developers and tech, you’re going to miss out.

The future of African tech will be built on the back of a strong developer ecosystem, and investing in African developers is half the journey.

What do you think of Infobip’s impact on Africa’s developer ecosystem? Let me know here.

PS: Infobip is offering up to $60,000 in credits to African startups, sign up for Infobip Startup Tribe to gain access.

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