Building Tech Communities for a digitized future

Let me start with an introduction of myself: My name is Amani, I’m a computer science graduate and software engineer from Nigeria. I am also a tech mentor, career coach, and community manager.

In January 2021, I founded a community project called Calabar Tech (CT), named after the city in Nigeria where I grew up and where I wanted to start this new network. At CT, anything tech goes, so we don’t just welcome software engineers, but related professions like web designers, project managers, etc.

Our community includes anyone from students to junior workers to experienced professionals and, to be precise, really anybody interested in tech space in general. We have a WhatsApp group with a few hundred users (we’re definitely most active there), but we also host in-person events and have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our website.

This might not seem out of the ordinary from afar, but for the relatively young tech community in Nigeria (and especially Calabar), projects like this make all the difference.

Where supply and demand don’t meet

When I graduated from university and knew I wanted to work in tech, I also knew that I couldn’t really stay in Calabar — Lagos was the place to be, the center of Nigeria’s recent tech boom. For me, that happened to work out fine; I moved to Lagos and started my tech career proper. But I was also painfully aware of all the other students and young professionals back in Calabar who had been in a similar situation as me, but who couldn’t make it into their desired field of work. There was no tech community to connect to, nobody to support their training or early career, and no referrals to companies eager to onboard new tech talent. In short, it was super hard.

What’s weird is that this stood in huge contrast to the very dire need for trained tech talent. The world is undergoing unimaginable digital transformations and needs the right people to power this massive process — which is why, in the last few years, I’ve seen people from seemingly every background transition to tech.

Though demand is huge everywhere, you can really feel it here in Nigeria. In fact, the government is planning to train three million youths in tech-related skills very shortly, just to keep the engine of the digital economy running. There’s also a lot of remote demand from abroad, which we’re happy to pick up. For international companies, this means affordable, trained talent, and for local professionals, it translates to wages that are noticeably higher than the national average.

Yet Calabar was full of people who couldn’t figure out how to enter the tech space. I wanted to change that.

Chasin the chance at changing lives

Our activities today are still very closely aligned with what I originally set out to do.

* Firstly, finding job opportunities in tech and connecting our community members to them.

* Secondly, facilitating as much networking as possible, either through in-person or virtual events, sometimes with guest speakers.

* Thirdly, financially supporting individuals training to work in tech — we currently host a program where we cover 30% of the training’s cost and then the remaining 70% once the person in question has found a job with their newfound skills.‍

I know that what we’re doing is important and that it has an impact because almost every month I am contacted by someone who got a job through Calabar Tech. That’s literally an entire life changed right there — can you imagine?‍

Some people don’t even realize how desperately they are needed, or how valuable their talent and skills are. For example, I remember one of our members who had no background in tech, nor a direct interest in “technical” work — but through talking with her I realized she had outstanding organizational and people skills. Turns out she was a born project manager, a role she is currently excelling at.‍

In places like Calabar, tech needs communities to pull talent from, and talent needs communities to connect to tech in the first place. It’s that simple.‍

What’s next for us?

I think that others are catching on to this notion since I’m finally seeing more communities like CT in my region — something I am incredibly excited about. I dream of opening CT up to the tech world at large, connecting all of our communities, and establishing this amazing network that everybody can profit from. ‍

Something I particularly love about CT is that it really is a community project. I have seen tech companies like Google or Amazon start regional communities of their own, but it’s very top-down and focused on a specific product or skill. CT was an opportunity to start something of my own, in my home town, with my own goals, where everybody can come together, no matter their background or where they’re heading in tech, and with us shaping our network, rather than a large overseas corporation.‍

In the next five years, I see CT expanding beyond Calabar and Nigeria, and for us to form more partnerships that can help us offer more mentorships and job opportunities, and give us the resources to create tailored support for individual community members based on their specific needs and situation. Currently, we have many members who are very, very junior, and who need one-on-one mentorship that we simply cannot provide to all of them. I can personally do it for a handful of candidates, but the community has more than 800 people in it after all.

For those looking to start in tech and for those considering starting a community of their own, I have the same advice: be passionate and don’t give up. People will tell you things won’t work out or that they’re impossible, and you’ll just have to push through it. You’ll also have to push through initial failures, but that’s where you need to be passionate. If you’re passionate, you won’t ever want to give up in the first place.