How I feel right now:

Yes, I am typing this post in trepidation because I fear my absence must have affected a lot, and in as much as I had my reasons (some of which included the fact that I was in a space mentally and physically where I felt overwhelmed with a couple of things that I was going through), I don’t think there is an excuse for not informing you guys while all these happened, and for that (and many more) I apologize:

However, the good thing about this is the fact I have since recognized the errors of my ways and I made an effort to improve my mental and physical state during my absence.

With that said, I made a video:

You don’t have to watch it if you haven’t forgiven me yet, but it’s about a device I received in the latter part of 2018 —the Umidigi A3, a midrange device that isn’t so bad considering the price point, but I will be giving away these devices to 2 people, the first would go to the person who has been commenting regularly despite my absence (You know yourself, and I’d contact you in a bit) and the other to another lucky person.

Now all you have to do to win is to tell me which of the photos below was taken using the Umidigi A3.  One Alphabet for one photo, in other words, if the answer in the first set is D then the same will also apply in the second set.

FIRST IMAGE SET:

A

B

C

D

Second image set

A

B

C

D

To increase your chances of winning, you must be following  my social media pages, including Facebook and Instagram (Click for Instagram and Facebook). Also, you must be subscribed to my channel and have notifications turned on (Click here to subscribe).

With that said, thank you guys for the love and support, I will not take it for granted.

The post Hello, World: Umidigi A3 Giveaway appeared first on MissTechy.

2019 is already looking to be quite competitive for Smartphone brands in Nigeria. We are about to have a lot of them vie for your attention this year, and guys, I am here for it !

Now, a global player has also set its sights on Nigeria and according to my sources, OPPO Mobile is planning to go head to head with companies like Samsung, Apple, and Huawei in Nigeria.

For a bit of background knowledge, OPPO is a leading global consumer electronics and mobile communication company. In 2018, Oppo was ranked as the number 4 smartphone, according to IDC, only after Samsung, Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi:

They are specifically known for their innovative smartphones.

Remember this one?

OPPO Mobile’s major aim has been to focus more on manufacturing camera phones while innovating mobile photography technology breakthroughs. For example, they pioneered the era of Selfie beautification and also introduced the first ever motorized rotating camera. But back to the Nigerian market, one of the products OPPO has quietly launched in Nigeria is the OPPO A3s:

A 3GB RAM mid-range device that cost about N69,000 on Jumia. As far as other specifications are concerned, you have:

• 13+2 MP Dual rear camera and an 8 MP front camera
• 6.2-inch) HD () capacitive touchscreen display with 1520×720 pixels and 19:9 aspect ratio
• 32GB storage expandable up to 256GB
• Dual SIM (nano+nano) with dual standby (4G+4G)
• Android v8.1 Oreo-based on Color OS 5.1 operating system
• 1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor
• Battery: 4230 mAH lithium-ion battery

Now with this spec sheet and others from devices like the Find X, R11, R15, and the OPPO F7, do you think OPPO has what it takes to win your hearts and your money?

The post Who is Ready for OPPO Mobile in Nigeria? appeared first on MissTechy.

I don’t know why Olamide’s song popped into my head while writing this post, and here is the funny thing, I don’t even know how to sing the song, but one phrase I always see on social media is “Poverty die die die” and I can’t help but think about the same for the notch.

According to a new leak, OnePlus might join others who might ditch the notch this year. The leak shows the absence of the display notch on the OnePlus 7:

That is not all— it also looks like OnePlus might employ a sliding mechanism:

I am not sure how I feel about that, but this post is not about the slider trend, it’s about the notch trend, and boy oh boy am I glad to see its likely demise.

Now, OnePlus isn’t the only phone manufacturer rumored to ditch the notch, Samsung beat them to it with their Infinity O display on the S10 (Although, Samsung and Sony were the only who avoided this trend)

….And the unveiled A8s:

Others include Nokia, with the Nokia 8.1:

Huawei’s Nova 4:

Let’s not forget Apple. Yes, the ringleader of this notch-mess (Although Essential started the trend of the display notch, Apple popularized it) has also been rumored to ditch the notch in 2019, while another report claims 2020.

Whatever the case may be, it seems the notch could be one of the shortest smartphone trends we have seen, and that is a good thing! But what will replace it?

(*Looks at the images above*).

Well, If 2018 was the year of the display notch, then it appears that 2019 will be the year of the ‘hole-punch’ or the ‘punch hole,’ which puts the front-facing camera in a tiny hole that’s almost unnoticeable.

Do I like it?

Well, at this point, anything that accelerates the death of the notch is to be celebrated, so the hole-punch it is!

Over to you, which look do you prefer— the hole punch or the notch? Also, what do you think about the OnePlus 7 leak?

The post 2019, the Year where the Notch Dies. Case-in-point: The OnePlus 7, the S10, and the Nokia 8.1. appeared first on MissTechy.

Picture this, you set two alarms for 6.30 am because you have a job interview. The only problem is, you woke up at 8 am because your Android phone thought it wise to kill all the background processes including your alarm app.

That is how aggressive some phone manufacturers are when it comes background processes.

In their defense, they do this to increase the battery life on a smartphone by using software optimizers to cut down on unwanted usage. Sometimes, it does a good job, especially for applications like Facebook. However, it can also become quite aggressive to a point where some of your important applications like Gmail suddenly stop running.

To shed light on the issue, the guys at Urbandroid launched a website called Don’t kill my app to show off the top offenders.

Check them out:

Nokia takes the lead (shocking, right?), while OnePlus ranks second worst, followed by Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu, Sony, Samsung, HTC, stock Android, and “Other vendors” — Tecno and Infinix, I see you!

However, the good news is that DontKillMyApp.com also provided a way to fix this issue for each manufacturer, for example, you could force close the ‘battery protection app’ on some Nokia devices that have this enabled:

To check out the processes for other devices click here.

Over to you guys, how well does your current smartphone handle background processes?

The post Please Don’t Kill My Apps: These Phone Manufacturers Suck When it Comes to Handling Background Processes. appeared first on MissTechy.

Paylater, an online lending platform in Nigeria, has just announced its Arise 2019 Data Science Internship program for young data-driven Nigerians who are interested in growing their skills while working on real-world data problems.

According to this tweet:

We're happy to announce the Arise 2019 Data Science Internship by Paylater .

If you want to advance your skills working on real-world Data problems, and become a data-driven professional, here's your chance .

Register here: https://t.co/qWs6JMQkea pic.twitter.com/EsTIuEh5is

— Paylater (@paylaterNG) January 14, 2019

The program is only accessible to individuals who are interested in data science and have a good understanding of statistics, SQL, GIT and intermediate experience with coding (Python).

In other words, rookies are:

Successful interns will help with customer insights, work on developing loan repayment and fraud models and also gain insights into full data science pipelines as well as a potential employment opportunity.

To apply, click here. Once completed, a follow-up email will be sent to you after the application deadline, the email will contain a link to the coding challenge and applicants will be required to complete the coding challenge in Python.

At the moment, there are no words on the deadline date, but if this is something of interest, it’s best you apply now.

The post Paylater is Offering Internship Opportunities to Young Nigerians Who Are Interested in Data Science. Here’s How to Apply. appeared first on MissTechy.

Remember this ad from Samsung?

It appears that Samsung has finally jumped on the notch trend despite their initial outcry.

In other words, Samsung is about to go from mocking Apple about this:

To having something similar to this:

To be fair, this is not an iPhone X-inspired notch, rather it goes in line with the teardrop notch that was spotted on the OnePlus 6t.

And I think it was intentional:

As the Verge noted, the Galaxy M series is Samsung’s answer to losing their top spot in India to Xiaomi.

Although the price hasn’t been revealed, a Samsung India executive told Reuters that the phones under the series would cost between 10,000 and 20,000 rupees ($140 to $280 USD), that is about N50,000 – N100,000.

As for the specs, this would come with dual rear-facing cameras, a USB Type-C port with support for fast charging, and a 5000mAh battery. One of the devices —the M20—would feature a 6.3-inch 2340 x 1080 LCD display, 13MP and 15MP rear cameras, and an Android 8.1 OS 

Of course, only time will tell if this could tempt Indians into ditching their Xiaomi phones, but do you think these devices have what it takes to tempt Nigerians?

The post This is the First Phone from Samsung with a Notch. appeared first on MissTechy.

All good things must come to an end, even Windows 7. After January 14, 2020, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates or support for PCs running Windows 7. But you can keep the good times rolling by moving to Windows 10.

The post Tick Tock: This is the Last Year Microsoft will Support Windows 7, But Some Users Are Not Bothered.  appeared first on MissTechy.

OK, Google:

Based on the current trend report, (January 8 – January 15th), more people are googling Atiku Abubakar than ever before.

PDP’s presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubakar has remained the most-searched candidate on Google this month, beating the current President:

…And other presidential candidates:

According to Google Trends, lots of people wanted to know about Abubakar’s age and the last time he traveled to the USA.

But people also wanted to know, quite simply, who this guy is.

You can also check out other things Nigerians searched for in the past week:

So, did Google just predict Nigeria’s next president?

Now, before Buhari’s supporters come for me or Google.

By the way:

I would have you know that Google Trends data does not necessarily reflect searchers’ attitudes toward the candidates. In other words, there is no reason to believe that Google searches positively correlate to voters intent. On the flip side, brand recognition can be likened to a two-edged sword in politics, if Nigerian voters don’t recognize a candidate’s name, his or her candidacy aspiration will die long before the Election Day.

With that said, I am just going to leave this here:

—

The post Here’s How Atiku Abubakar is Winning the Presidential Race….On Google. appeared first on MissTechy.

I am sorry, guys, but I have to let it out:

Lenovo:

Anyway, the word on the street is that Motorola might be banking on nostalgia to launch a Smartphone in February, not just any Smartphone, though.

Now, if you are a 2000s kid, you’d have probably seen one of these phones from Motorola:

According to the WSJ, the Motorola Razr (the one up there) might be making a comeback as a $1,500 ‘foldable’ screen smartphone. However, no leaked image of the new device has surfaced, yet.

This is a Motorola Razr concept, not the real deal

The report also claims that the company, Lenovo, only “plans to manufacture about 200,000 of the new high-end phones.”

I tried to find hints about Razr’s new design, luckily, I found this patent on Android Authority: 

Now, if the company moved forward with this design, then I doubt if they’d be able to sell 200,000 units in 2019, especially at that price point.

Who’s with me?

The post The Price of Nostalgia: Motorola’s RAZR Could Return as a N540,000 Foldable Smartphone. appeared first on MissTechy.

With over 100 million downloads, there is no doubt that ES file explorer is one of the most popular file manager apps out there

However, a new report from TechCrunch might have you looking at the app differently.

According to the report, the app is running a slimmed down web-server that opens up your entire device to attacks. This vulnerability was revealed by a French security researcher, Elliot Anderson. He found that if an ES File Explorer user is connected to a local network, say a WiFi network or a LAN, their data can be extracted by anyone who is also connected to the same network, of course, without their permission.

To demonstrate this hack, and data vulnerability, Elliot wrote a simple script and used this vulnerability to remotely pull out images, phone numbers, videos, apps from another Android phone, he was also able to pull out information stored in the memory card.

However, as TechCrunch noted, this data vulnerability can only affect those who are connected to the same WiFi or local network, which makes the chances of exploitation very slim, but on the flip side, this also means that the open access could be exploited by any malicious app that has the required network permissions.

While we wait for a response from ES file explorer, what file manager app do you use on your Smartphone?

The post Do You Have ES File Explorer Installed? Your Data Might Be At Risk! appeared first on MissTechy.

Another day, another data theft.

According to reports, hundreds of millions of email addresses and passwords have been posted online for anyone to download and this is in the wake of ES file explorer’s data vulnerability.

Me right now: 

This is actually the largest public data breach in history —over 772,904,991 unique emails and 21,222,975 unique passwords have been exposed so far.

Now, what this means is that the list could be used by hackers to carry out “credential stuffing” attacks, where hackers take lists of usernames and passwords and enter them on a range of other platforms to try and force access to different user accounts.

In the words of the researcher:

“People take lists like these that contain our email addresses and passwords then they attempt to see where else they work.”

“The success of this approach is predicated on the fact that people reuse the same credentials on multiple services. Perhaps your personal data is on this list because you signed up to a forum many years ago you’ve long since forgotten about, but because its subsequently been breached and you’ve been using that same password all over the place, you’ve got a serious problem.

To check if your email address is on the list, just head to the site, and enter your email address in the dialog box.

If your email ID was not part of the data breach, you’ll get a message as shown below:

The post Latest Email Breach: Here’s How to Check if Your Email Address Has Been Affected. appeared first on MissTechy.

When I read the report yesterday, the first thing that came to mind were these comments made by Adewale:

…And Jason_Sleek:

Well, it seems the tech gods have finally hearkened unto y(our) prayers.

According to the report, Xiaomi is set to establish offices in Africa.

This was revealed in a memo that Xiaomi confirmed with the Global Times. In the memo, Xiaomi’s African Regional Department will be headed by Wang Lingming and he will report to Wang Xiang.

However, industry insiders claim that Xiaomi “will not pose great challenges to the region’s current market leader, China-based Transsion, in the short term,” the reason is based on the fact that “Xiaomi’s phones will be too expensive for Africans if the company doesn’t adjust prices to location conditions and consumer’s low purchasing power.”

Although this is quite valid, I’d like to believe:

For one, Xiaomi phones currently sold on Jumia global are quite affordable, especially when compared to phones with similar specs, and if the company establishes its presence, the prices could reduce to an extent, plus we get access to after-sales service.

Also, there is this report that claims that Xiamoi could launch Redmi Go phones in Africa, which could cost less than N35,000.

iTel right now:

No words on the exact date Xiaomi is expected to officially kick off, but we’ve been waiting for years, so a little wait cannot hurt, right?

Who is excited?

The post The News We’ve Been Waiting For—Xiaomi is Set to Expand into African Markets. appeared first on MissTechy.

I think Nigerian parents are in a Whatsapp group together where they conspire to exchange broadcast messages and forward them to their kids. Personally, I can’t get over the fact that Nigerian parents are usually the first to forward to you a WhatsApp broadcast message to warn you about scams, yet they’re usually the first to fall for them.

With that said, henceforth, Whatsapp users will only be able to forward messages to five contacts or groups at once.

This move was made by Whatsapp in a bid to cut down on the spread of fake news.

According to the press release:

“Starting today, all users on the latest versions of WhatsApp can now forward to only five chats at once, which will help keep WhatsApp focused on private The Facebook-owned company notes that it’ll “look for new ways” to address viral content. After all, there’s a big difference between sharing a hoax news link and a funny cat video. Nevertheless, it’s a small sacrifice to make when hoax messages have led to people literally dying.

Of course, this won’t completely solve the epidemic that is Fake news, but it could help to slow down the process. At least, my mum would think twice before forwarding messages like this one:

The post You Can No Longer Forward More than 5 Messages on WhatsApp, And That’s A Good Thing! appeared first on MissTechy.

Imagine not being able to access Facebook, Instagram or Twitter for a week: 

FOMO attacks

 

Yes, it’s that scary (At least for me)!

 

Well, for Chad, it is worse than that!

 

According to QZ, Chad has kept social media shut for 300 days. The blackout which started in March 28th is as a result of a constitutional reform that could enable the current president, Idriss Deby, to stay in power until 2033 when he will be 81. At the moment, he has spent 29 years in power!

 

Now, Chad is not the only country to block access to social media, in 2017, Cameroon blocked access for 230 days. The same applies to Sudan, Zimbabwe, and DR Congo. As a matter of fact, these countries (Sudan, Zimbabwe, and DR Congo)  currently do not have access to the internet. However, Chad is the only country to have blocked access to social media for this long!

 

 

Even though people might have diverse opinions about the importance of social media, you can’t deny its impact. For example, when working to end Ebola in Sierra Leone, WhatsApp was used to identify what rumors were circulating, allowing the people in charge to quickly address them in radio shows broadcast across the country, and that is just one of it. With social media people in developing countries can now obtain educational, mobile health and financial services in ways that were impossible before mobile technology and the spread of social media, so it’s quite saddening to see a whole country without it. 

 

The post Chad is Currently in its 300th Day of Social Media Blackout. appeared first on MissTechy.

Huawei Founder, Ren Zhengfei, in a recent appearance at an international media roundtable held at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen specified that Huawei has never spied for China. He said neither Huawei nor him personally “have ever received any requests from any government to provide improper information”. Even if so, he added, as a business entity, the firm “will certainly say no to any such request”.

Based on the interview which featured globally renowned media platforms, here is what Mr. Ren Zhengfei said about the major issues:

On Security:

“First point I want to make is that over the past 30 years, our products have been used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than 3 billion users in total. We have maintained a solid track record in security. Huawei is an independent business organization. When it comes to cyber security and privacy protection, we are committed to siding with our customers. We will never harm any nation or any individual. Secondly, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has officially clarified that no law in China requires any company to install backdoors. Neither Huawei, nor I personally, have ever received any requests from any government to provide improper information.”

“We are a company, and we are a business entity. The values of a business entity are such that it must be customer-centric and the customer always comes first. We are a business organization, so we must follow business rules. I think I already made myself very clear earlier. We will certainly say no to any such request. After writing this quote in your story, maybe 20 or 30 years down the road, if I am still alive, people will consider this quote and check my behavior against it, as well as the behavior of our company.”

On Arrest of Meng Wanzhou:

“The case of Meng Wanzhou right now is in legal proceedings. So, we’d rather leave it to legal proceedings. I won’t provide much comment about it here.

As Meng Wanzhou’s father, I miss her very much. And I’m deeply grateful to the fairness of the Honorable Justice, William Ehrcke. I’m also much grateful to Prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley and Prosecutor Kerri Swift. I also thank the Alouette Correctional Centre for Women for its humane management. Thanks to Meng Wanzhou’s cellmates, for treating her kindly.

I also appreciate the consular protection that the Chinese government has provided in safeguarding the rights and interests of Meng Wanzhou as a Chinese citizen. I trust that the legal systems of Canada and the United States are open, just, and fair, and will reach a just conclusion.”

On 5G:

“In terms of 5G, we have signed 30-plus commercial contracts today, and we have already shipped 25,000 5G base stations. We have 2,570 5G patents. I believe that, as long as we develop very compelling products, there will be customers who will buy them.

If your products are not good, no matter how strong you go for publicity, nobody will buy them. So what matters to Huawei more is working to streamline our internal management, improve our products, and improve our services. I think that’s what we should work on to address the challenges of this changing world.

There are only several companies in the world working on 5G infrastructure equipment, and not many companies are engaged in microwave technology. Huawei is the only company in the world that can integrate 5G base stations with the most advanced microwave technology. With that capability, our 5G base stations don’t even need fiber connections. Instead, they can use superfast microwave to support ultra-wide bandwidth backhauls. This is a compelling solution that makes a lot of economic sense. It works best for sparsely populated rural areas.”

“As I mentioned, right now our R&D investment averages 15–20 billion US dollars per year. That puts Huawei in the top 5 position across all industries in the world in terms of R&D intensity. In total, we have been granted 87,805 patents. In the United States, we have registered 11,152 core technology patents. We are actively involved in 360+ standards bodies, where we have made more than 54,000 proposals.”

 

On China-US trade dispute:

“I would say Huawei is not that important. We are like a small sesame seed, stuck in the middle of conflict between two great powers. What role can we play? The trade conflict between China and the US has not had a major impact on our business. We are expected to continue our growth in 2019.”

“We are the strongest in terms of telecommunications capabilities. I believe people will make their own comparison in the end between countries that choose Huawei and countries that don’t work with Huawei. Of course, there is no way we can control their choice.”

“So what matters to Huawei more is working to streamline our internal management, improve our products, and improve our services. I think that’s what we should work on to address the challenges of this changing world.”

“Some countries have decided not to buy equipment from Huawei. Therefore, we can shift our focus to better serve countries that welcome Huawei. We can build high-quality networks in those countries to prove that we are trustworthy. Therefore, it’s like a peaceful race from a technical point of view, and I think that’s fair.”

On the Business outlook for 2019

“In 2019, we might face challenges and difficulties in the international market. That’s why I said earlier that our growth next year would be less than 20%.”

Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains – telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services – Huawei is renowned for being committed to providing digital access and solutions to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.

The post “We will never harm any nation or any individual” – Ren Zhengfei, Huawei Founder. appeared first on MissTechy.

The good guys at Microsoft want your feedback, and for those wondering:

Anyway, they want you to tell them how they can improve gaming on Windows 10.

In their words,

“Team Xbox would love to hear how you’d like to see gaming on Windows improved. How can Windows 10 enhance your gaming experience? What features would you like added or changed to make gaming on Windows 10 even better?”

Before you get your fingers ready to type:

It’s best to look at existing suggestions that have been submitted by other users, some of which include:

• When running a game, Windows should automatically disable processes while playing.
• Create a version of Windows specifically for gaming.
• Let users disable unnecessary processes while playing games.
• Allow users to launch games on PC with a controller.

However, you can still add your suggestion(s) by clicking here and signing up using your email address.

So, do you have any suggestions for Microsoft?

The post Who’s Interested? Microsoft Wants Your Help in Making Gaming on Windows 10 Better. appeared first on MissTechy.

**Hello, click here to get a free Samsung Galaxy S9, only valid from now until 23rd of January 2019!

If you fell for that, there is a bigger chance you might fall for the scams in Google’s phishing quiz.

Today, Google launched a short interactive quiz to test how good you are at identifying phishing emails and also teach you how you can better spot them.

The quiz is divided into 8 categories of emails, all of which have been inspired by real-life phishing scams, and your job is to identify them.

According to Google’s Jigsaw unit (the team behind this):

“We created this quiz based on the security trainings we’ve held with nearly 10,000 journalists, activists, and political leaders around the world from Ukraine to Syria to Ecuador. We’ve studied the latest techniques attackers use, and designed the quiz to teach people how to spot them.”

Don’t forget to share your scores, and don’t ask me for mine. 

The post Take This Google Quiz to See if You Can Spot Phishing Emails. appeared first on MissTechy.

This is the reaction I have on my face, right now:

Zhuhai-based Meizu, a Zhuhai based company recently announced Meizu Zero, a phone that doesn’t come with any opening or holes, so you have no buttons, speaker grilles, charging port or even a SIM card slot.

Well, this is a concept phone that was designed to get people thinking about the future.

The phone uses eSIM technology to replace the lack of a physical card slot, for audio, it uses mSound 2.0 screen sound technology that is capable of pumping sound through the display via vibrations—the same tech used by Xiaomi in the original Mi Mix.

It also comes with a touch capacitive panels that when pressed firmly will recreate the feeling of a button, these panels serve as power and volume control buttons. Also, since there is no charging port, the Meizu Zero utilizes the company’s self-developed 18W wireless fast charging technology and Bluetooth 5.0 for data transfers.

As far as specs are concerned, you have the company’s Flyme 7 UI, likely based on Android Oreo, build-wise, the Meizu Zero has a ceramic unibody construction with IP68 water and dust resistance.

It uses a 5.99-inch sized flexible OLED display with an In-display fingerprint sensor and a 2.5D glass layer on top, you also have a 20MP front-facing camera with facial recognition technology and a 12MP Sony IMX380 + 20MP Sony IMX350 dual-camera setup at the rear with Meizu’s One Mind AI Smart 2 engine.

Under the hood, Meizu’s latest smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor.

The post This is the World’s First Phone With a Hole-less Design—No Buttons, Speakers, Sim Card Slot or Charging Port appeared first on MissTechy.

When it comes to foldable phones, the first brand that comes to mind is Samsung.

However, it looks like Xiaomi might showing a strong interest.

Today, Xiaomi’s President, Lin Bin, shared a hands-on video of its first foldable phone:

At first glance, the prototype device looks like a bezel-less tablet:

But if you keep watching for a bit, you’d see how the sides of the phone were folded to make it look like a sleek phone.

This approach — folding both sides— is somehow different from Samsung’s which can be opened like a book to access its foldable 7.3-inch display

For now, no other details have been shared regarding Xiaomi’s foldable concept, but Xiaomi is already asking their fans what the name of the foldable phone lineup should be.

Until we get more details, does this look like something you can buy in 2019?

The post Would You Buy Xiaomi’s Foldable Phone? appeared first on MissTechy.

–Andela, the company building distributed engineering teams with Africa’s top software developers, today announced the completion of a $100M Series D funding. The round was led by Generation Investment Management with participation from existing investors including Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GV, Spark Capital, and CRE Venture Capital. The most recent financing brings Andela’s total venture funding to $180M.  Andela was founded in 2014 to connect Africa’s engineering talent with the demand for software developers worldwide. In four years, Andela has assessed more than one hundred thousand applicants, hired one thousand software developers, and integrated them into hundreds of companies, such as Safaricom, Percolate, and InVision.  

With the Series D funding, Andela will accelerate the development of its technology platform to identify, develop and match talent at scale. By doing so, Andela will provide its customers with the data they need to understand developer performance and better manage distributed teams. The company will also expand its presence across Africa to meet the global demand for high-quality engineering talent.

“It’s increasingly clear that the future of work will be distributed, in part due to the severe shortage of engineering talent,” says Jeremy Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Andela. “Given our access to incredible talent across Africa, as well as what we’ve learned from scaling hundreds of engineering teams around the world, Andela is able to provide the talent and the technology to power high-performing teams and help companies adopt the distributed model faster.”

“Andela has been a critical player in Nigeria’s technology revolution,” says Omowale David-Ashiru, Country Director at Andela. “Due to our unwavering commitment to our mission throughout the last four years, Andela has grown into a thriving platform for hundreds of technologists in Nigeria. With this investment, Andela will accelerate the development of Africa’s best tech talent in Nigeria and beyond.”

“Generation’s investment in Andela resulted from our deep research into the future of work. We believe Andela is a transformational model to develop software engineers and deploy them at scale into the future enterprise,” says Lilly Wollman, Co-Head of Growth Equity at Generation Investment Management. “The global demand for software engineers far exceeds supply, and that gap is projected to widen. Andela’s leading technology enables firms to effectively build and manage distributed engineering teams. We are great admirers of the outstanding team, mission and culture Andela has built across two continents and five countries.”

With tech campuses in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, Andela has been recognized as “The Best Place to Work in Africa.” In 2018, The Wall Street Journal named Andela as one of the twenty-five technology company to watch, and the year prior, Fast Company ranked Andela as the most innovative company in Africa. In 2019, Andela is projected to double in size, hiring another one thousand software developers and investing heavily in data, engineering, and product development.

The post Andela Has Secured $100M in Series D Funding Round to Build Distributed Engineering Teams and Power the Future of Work. appeared first on MissTechy.