Andela, the engineering as-a-service business that helps companies build teams quickly and cost-effectively so that they can ship faster has officially launched Uganda’s first-ever Developer ecosystem report. The report is a fruit of the inaugural Developer Survey which was launched on May 30, 2019, and closed in October 2019, after a period of 5 months.
The ecosystem report was born out of a need to know the trends and patterns of Uganda’s tech ecosystem, having realised that there was no one place where sufficient information about it could be found. Out of 1,053 respondents that visited the survey page, 800 completed the survey, yielding a completion rate of 75.97%.
Some of the key findings in the report include;
- 84% of the developer population is male while 16% is female
- Our ecosystem is comprised of mostly junior and mid-level developers with a few senior developers i.e. 51.3%, 36.5%, and 12.2% respectively
- Over 80% of the software developers are working in and around the capital city, Kampala, with a few scattered in the other major cities of Uganda.
- Javascript is currently the most used language in our ecosystem, followed by Python. This is consistent with global trends.
- 1% of the respondents are full-time employees, 11.4% are part-time employees, 15.1% are freelancers with 5.7% working as interns.
- 2% of the respondents prefer to work from/remotely
Additionally, the findings indicate that most developers are concentrated in Kampala and Wakiso districts, with a few scattered in Mbarara, Mukono, Mbale and Gulu districts. 67% of these developers between the ages of 19 and 30 years are located in the aforementioned two districts.
It was also observed that software developers who work remotely, from Uganda, for companies outside Uganda, mostly in the US, seem to earn a lot more than the employees working for local companies. The highest gross salaries are above UGX 10M for those working remotely.
They are closely followed by people who work in corporate and multinational companies with an average gross salary of UGX 5.5M. The rest of the employees seem to be within the range of 0 to 2.5M with the more senior developers in the 2.5M to 5M bracket. Employees in startup companies exhibit the lowest salaries recorded.
Speaking to the importance of the report, Jackie Ochola, Country Director Andela Uganda said that the report is a big step for the Ugandan ecosystem and the company believes it will be a valuable resource to take targeted actions for growth.
“Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent for software developers and for us to continue to invest in the growth of the craft, we urgently need to understand the ecosystems.”
Andela, in its commitment to growing the ecosystem, continues to run initiatives like the Teen Code program aimed at introducing high school students to code; the Women in Tech leadership program that focuses on equipping women for professional software delivery; and the Andela Learning Community programs in partnership with Google and Facebook that provide free learning resources and have so far supported over 23,500 learners across Africa.
The Annual Developer Survey report 2019 can be accessed here.
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