Mark Zuckerberg backs startup looking to 'close the opportunity gap' in Africa

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan "like" Andela. 

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will lead a funding effort worth $24 million for Andela, a New York-based startup that trains software developers in Africa.  The program is the first major investment since it was established by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan in December 2015. 

"We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not," Zuckerberg said. "Andela's mission is to close that gap."

Founded in 2014, Andela's mission is to provide a fast track for high-achieving college students and professionals in Africa to learn to code. The organization currently employs nearly 200 people in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lagos, Nigeria. 

The program is extremely selective, accepting just 0.7% of the 40,000 people who have applied. Those that gain entry are paired with companies like IBM, Google and Facebook for four year contracts. 

With this investment from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Andela will be able to increase the number of people involved in the program and move closer to their 10 year goal of training 100,000 software developers across the African continent. It will also be opening a campus in a third country, says Andela CEO and Co-founder Jeremy Johnson, speaking with Mashable.

“We find genius-level developers across the African continent," Johnson said. "We give them the tools to engage as top members of engineering teams. These people are incredible. It's humbling." 

Andela is also looking to bring more women into software development, with a company goal of 35% female developers. Right now 34% of their developers in Kenya are women, and 21% in Nigeria. 

"At Andela we believe there is no excuse for having fewer female software developers" Andela notes on its website. " ...we know that talent is gender-neutral."

"When the best person on a team is a young woman from Kenya, it forces people to rethink what a developer looks like," Johnson added. "We're changing hearts and minds."

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was established after the birth of Zuckerberg and Chan's first child, a daughter named Max. It will gradually receive 99% of Zuckerberg's shares in Facebook over his lifetime, worth an estimated $45 billion. It seeks to "[improve] this world for the next generation," Zuckerberg said. "We have a basic moral responsibility to tilt our investments."

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