Lambda School, a California-based edutech company, has accepted 53 African’s into its 2019 Programme for Young African Developers.
The recent batch of Lambda School students was selected from a pool of applicants from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa. The accepted students will receive a fully-funded training from Lambda School to become software engineers.
Lambda School CEO, Austen Allred, shared the development in a tweet congratulating the selected students. According to Allred, 27 of the 53 accepted are women.
This development is coming 6 months after Lambda School raised a $30 million Series B, specifically to power its proposed expansion. The school is also partnering with several African companies, like Paystack, BuyCoins and Cowrywise. After the programs, the students have a good chance of being hired by any of the Lambda school partners.
In Africa, Lambda School has 13 partners hiring directly from the Lambda School in Africa. Allred, in a tweet thanking their partners, revealed a list of companies ranging from small startups to a national bank with 70 branches in Lagos alone.
Lambda School offers a 9-month immersive training program that gives students tools and training to become competent software engineers. The program employs an expert curriculum designed and taught by instructors from Google, Apple and Blizzard.
Lambda students pay no upfront cost for attending the school, although there is an income sharing arrangement where programme graduates pay a percentage of their income on securing a job. Over 1300 students have reportedly enrolled in Lambda Schools. Current statistics show that 86% have secured jobs within 180 days of completing the programme.
In Nigerian, fintech startup, Paystack, will be a major partner in the Lambda School programme, as Paystack is committed to paying for membership with co-working spaces near the students so they have access to reliable electricity and internet during the programme.
Paystack has also promised to bear the cost of the income sharing agreement of any developer they employ. Interestingly both Lambda School and their partners Paystack, are alumni of the globally-acclaimed Y Combinator Accelerator.
The expansion of Lambda School into the African market is laudable, as the company has a fact sheet of producing marketable software developers. The resource and opportunity the edutech company brings into the growth of software developers could make significant improvements in the Nigerian tech space.
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