Id known Fred Swaniker for over a decade when he first invited our group to join the African Leadership Network, a retreat for young Africans from across the continent to share, learn, connect and create the links and networks to help grow transformative businesses and ventures throughout Africa. This time we met on a rainy Sunday morning in New York following a gruelling week at the UN General Assembly, a maelstrom of events, gatherings, dinners, and meetings.
We decided to go for a walk in Central Park, near the Upper West side and not far from where Swaniker now resides, having relocated from Nairobi to be close to his clients and to help grow his latest business, Sand Technologies, the eighth venture he has launched in the last twenty years 95 of our revenues today come from outside of Africa. I wanted to be closer to our customers, so I could grow the company and create more jobs in Africa. This is similar to how Indian talent builds tech for the world, he explains.
Sitting down with Swaniker is always enlightening. The Ghanaian-born serial entrepreneurs enthusiasm and passion remain on full display. His next moonshot to train an army of software engineers three to five million over the next ten years, through Sand Technologies ALX company. We expect to reach five million in the next decade, he assures me. And were not just talking. Were training 250,000 people right now across Africa to become software engineers, data scientists, cloud engineers and so on.
Africas youth bulge is at once an opportunity and a risk. With so many young people, the continent has the most vibrant source of workers and consumers going into the future. And yet, without a matching supply of jobs and livelihoods, it could easily become a trigger for social discord and unrest.
Im very bullish on the talent, but Im not bullish on the demographic dividend and the way things are going. We need to do a massive talent export strategy. We need to export 100m people from Africa. However, exporting our talent does not necessarily mean brain drain.
