The Myth of Africa’s Talent/skill Gap

Okay, so in simple terms, talent is often used in the technology field to mean the same as skill, and a skill is one’s ability, knowledge, and expertise needed to carry out a specific task or activity effectively, right? Now, you also have to know what an industry is. An industry is a group of manufacturers or businesses that produce a particular kind of goods or services. Good, the terminology is now out of the way.

So when people say there is a skill gap in Africa, they mean that there is a lack of ability, knowledge, and other resources to carry out specific tasks, right? Okay, now let me ask a question. Let’s say I come from Birnin Kebbi in Nigeria or Karamoja in Uganda and move to Europe to study advanced natural language processing, which is used by all Fortune 500 companies — from document processing to how they make money, and now in AI of large language models. Then I am told to go back and help my people. Now, think about it — how would such knowledge help a place with no power, no roads, poor sanitation, health problems, social conflict, and literacy problems? In reality, I am far better off getting on in the USA and sending money, or better yet, I study tropical medicine and come back to treat people for next to nothing — at least I would save lives.

Another example: now I am in town. Let’s say I am in Nairobi or Kampala, and I have a master’s in drug discovery, nanotechnology, advanced computer engineering, or biotechnology. Now, all these fields are examples of Africa’s so-called skill gap. But let’s say I had this knowledge — I am in town! Now, as far as I am aware, there is no African company that has ever fully developed and owns its own drug that’s on any shelf. Most drugs are generics competing with thousands of others making the same drugs worldwide. No company that I have tried to look for has developed its own cell line (these are cells that produce the active ingredients in drugs). Many drugs today are made using cell lines, but none that I have searched for has developed a cell line to make more competitive and life-saving drugs. The same applies to nanotechnology — apart from some startups that are trying, none is making even more than 5 million USD in ARR or has more than 100 employees. Though at least there is some usage of nanotechnology, it is not zero, but it is not a billion-dollar industry locally.

Computer engineering is used in developing advanced hardware. Now, in most parts of Africa (not all), there is so little successful (meaning at least worth 5 to 10 million USD) design of commercial System-on-a-Chip or high-component-count electronic design. Most are just bought from China, predesigned from China, or, for example, most electronic bicycle startups just buy the app (use a general app from the maker in China) for the whole tech. Even large companies that could make their own for IP and try to create a moat — like telecoms that sell routers, phones, and other devices — don’t; they buy from a contractor.

So why have I said all this? Well, the issue, my friends, is simple: if there is no or little industry, there is no talent. Repeat after me: if there is no or little industry, there is no talent.

This point is simple but so important. What incentive is there for someone to learn advanced game design in Africa when there has never been a successful AAA game, AA, or even A game that generates at least 2 to 5 million USD in ARR to support a team of 100 in Africa? If someone is doing it, they have a huge, near-impossible mountain to climb to be in Africa or must use their skills for any economic activity for an existing venture — unless they get a job online (which is another story, as online hiring can be biased, and you are competing with others. Remember, it’s not impossible, just harder).

How Talent is Made

Principle: Where there is industry, there is talent. When industry grows, more talent grows, and industry grows other industries if the skills are transferable or cash moves between them.

The Story of Deepseek and Talent

By now, we all know the story of Deepseek and its founder Liang Wenfeng, a man whose side project has shocked the world. His hedge fund, Ningbo High-Flyer Quantitative Investment Management Partnership (Limited Partnership), has 7 billion USD under management (to compare, the biggest bank in Uganda, Stanbic, has 2.408 billion USD under management).

So, he is a man of funds. He is not applying for grants of 5,000–100,000 USD; he is funding what he wants using a grown industry or venture that I am sure he gets a good salary from. For more context, Deepseek using reinforcement learning was not a new idea. People knew this and tried. I was one of those who tried using a local LLM on my poor Dell 8GB RAM PC (of course, I failed). Others had stronger hardware and GPUs but failed due to various technical issues. But Liang Wenfeng got a team (now called top talent in the world) and funded the team with millions of USD (far more than 5 million USD reported). They experimented with different architectures and optimization techniques until they found the way. Now, the team is top talent, and rumors have it they are being offered millions of USD in salaries to work for other companies.

But now let me ask: would you have known who they are — who their talent is — if they did not have access to funds to experiment? If Liang Wenfeng had not succeeded in finance? If the other industries around were not there to use their technology and identify their skills to use in other industries?

So, this is an example of the problem in Africa. The issue seems to be more about a lack of opportunity to express talent rather than a lack of talent itself. Liang Wenfeng has stated that the secret to success was how he organized people and did not hire “successful” people — he even preferred to hire people with no experience in finance, for example, but as long as they had the ability and will, that was enough.

The biggest companies in Africa are not companies developing new technology — not even telecoms. Mobile money was not based on any new technology made by them; they did not even develop a new protocol for it (not saying they did nothing, but it’s not a new protocol or network like blockchain or even a deep modification like gRPC). This means most are not incentivized to invest heavily in other ventures apart from their own, as new tech is harder to develop. This can be seen from the low mergers and acquisitions that happen. So how will talent express itself under such conditions?

The Way Forward

More Growing Industry = More Talent (Expression of Talent)

Now, it’s not that simple. Let’s take games, for example. This is the biggest entertainment industry on earth, but Africa has not really been successful at it. What comes first — industry or skill? The hard fact is it’s both, because both give birth to each other. Ayoba has been doing game hackathons to host on their app. If the app becomes bigger and people play more games, African developers will most likely make more money, hire more developers and teams. Then, probably, one day, one of them will take the risk to make a far more complex game to sell on Steam and PlayStation, and if it tops the charts, everyone will say they were talented (which will not be false, but remember how it came to be).

Stuff to Do

• Study hard but focus on cash flow, as cash is the lifeblood of industry.
• Ventures must grow and have more hunger to grow — not just home-only solution-based ventures (those tend not to grow).
• Just build.
• Solve a problem for people who have the money to pay for it to be solved.

I could say much more — this is not all I had to say. I could write much more about this, and I had to leave out a lot of examples and stories, but that’s all for now.