Mark Zuckerberg to Invest in Nigerian Startup Andela

Facebook founder Mark Zuckergerg and his wife, Priscilla Chan’s The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an investment venture co-owned by the couple has announced plans to place an investment in Andela Inc., a Nigerian owned startup that trains software developers in Lagos, Nigeria and Nairobi, Kenya.

This marks the first move by the venture after it was created about a year ago with the couple’s pledge of 99% of their Facebook shares to be used to fund it over the course of their lives. The fund at inception was aimed at focusing on personalized learning, finding cures to diseases, connecting people around the world and building strong communities. The shares are now valued at about $48 billion.

Andela, a software oriented company was created in 2014 with the aim of training over 100,000 developers over the next 10 years, according to the Chief Executive Jeremy Johnson in an interview. He also noted that most of the target beneficiaries will come from Africa, where 60% of the more than one billion people are under age 25 and many young people are out of work. Andela’s other investors include Spark Capital and the Omidyar Network.

ZuckerbergIn a post on his personal Facebook wall, Zuckerberg said:

“Andela is working to unlock that potential by finding and training top tech talent in Africa. After a six-month software development program, Andela Fellows work remotely for Fortune 500 companies and startups around the world. Companies get access to great developers, and developers in Africa get the opportunity to use their skills and support their communities. Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world — and what Andela is doing is pretty amazing.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is estimated to inject about $24 million into the startup, in collaboration with other investors. These include GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet Inc. previously known as Google Ventures.