Africa is full of young people who see the internet as their ticket to a better life. Adewale Yusuf, a Nigerian tech entrepreneur, saw this continent-wide drive as an opportunity to connect African workers, mainly programmers, with global clients, mainly tech companies – all remotely. For this, he built TalentQL, a platform that acts as a wormhole – transporting African coders into the borderless realm of the global digital market.
But he realized that more was missing than the mere connection between the supply and demand of digital work. Few applicants were ready to deliver the services that global clients needed. So, Adewale did what entrepreneurs do, he founded another company: AltSchool.
AltSchool is a learning platform for software engineers, product marketers, and data scientists – remotely.
In our conversation, Adewale and I discuss whether the pre-Covid world of cities and offices is turning into a post-Covid world of video calls and long-distance learning circles, and what roles young Africans might play in such a world.