Kenya’s rise as an East African technology hub suffers from a qualification shortage: Many employers struggle to find the right talent, and those unfilled vacancies are threatening long-term growth.
Enter Moringa School. Here, students learn to code from a world-class curriculum with top quality instructors and mentors to support them in the process. Future developers are accepted into the school based on logic, math, reasoning skills, and a Codecademy test—the aim is to take on the best and brightest, so the acceptance rate is just 7 percent.
Photo credit: Rachel Reed/Moringa School
Located in Nairobi, the program starts with a two-week intro to programming course before moving into Moringa’s 16-week core program, which at 11 hours a day and five days a week, is a full-time gig. After an in-house technology consultancy, the students become job seekers at the school’s career fair, where Moringa’s 30+ hiring partners are at their disposal.
Photo credit: Rachel Reed/Moringa School
Many of the students have gone on to do amazing things. For example, Justus Mbaluka is the lead developer at M-Farm, a company that connects farmers to markets and each other, giving them price information over their mobile phones and the ability to organize—thus helping them move from subsistence agriculture to commercial farming, creating a path out of poverty.
Photo credit: Rachel Reed/Moringa School
Moringa School is perfectly positioned in Kenya’s rapidly growing information and communications technology sector. Its three income sources—full-time tuition, Moringa DevShop client work for various clients in the U.S. and Europe, and a hiring placement fee—ensure sustainability. Moringa also has a partnership with Hack Reactor in the U.S.—the relationship entails curriculum consultation and one-on-one mentorship.
Photo credit: Rachel Reed/Moringa School
By training high-potential people who are passionate about technology, Moringa School is creating talented developers who are able to go on to create jobs and mentor others. And as if that wasn’t impressive enough, Moringa School will be representing Kenya on the worldwide stage at the Challenge Cup Global Finals in Washington D.C. in June. Put on by D.C. incubator 1776, this annual global tournament spans over 50 cities and covers every continent to find, fund, and spotlight highly-scalable startups with transformative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
Moringa’s place in the Challenge Cup finals proves that when people have access to the tools and knowledge of the internet, they have access to opportunities that make life better for all of us.
