Kenya's hopes of living up to its billing as the Silicon Savannah have been boosted by the arrival of big tech companies. Part of the effect has been the start of a big fight for human resources and there are now ideas about how that can be dealt with in the long term.

A silent war broke out soon after Microsoft launched its Africa Development Centre in Nairobi in March.

The fighting was for the crop of young software engineers in Kenya and the most effective weapon was money.

For George Njuguna, the Director, Information Technology at Safaricom (pictured above), the words “war for talent” were the perfect description of the phenomenon he was witnessing as software engineers, especially the really good ones, migrated for better pay.

“We’ve seen quite a lot of our developers being poached by big, big, multinationals, like Microsoft, AWS (Amazon Web Services), and others, as well as many local companies, banks, fintechs, who are hiring developer talent,” Njuguna told the Safaricom Newsroom.

The “war for talent” was among the first items on the agenda at the Safaricom Engineering Summit, an event organized by the company to bring together a range of stakeholders in the sector, from technology companies to learning institutions and the much sought-after engineers.

Apart from the entry of the multinationals, the war for software engineering talent has been driven by the accelerated digitization that was necessitated by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Google’s Africa Developer Ecosystem Report for 2021 says three other factors contributed to the positive developments in the developer community: the growth of local startups, increased demand for remote tech talent and increased demand for the use of the internet by local businesses, which in turn hired developers to help them grow their businesses online.

The result has been an increase in the number of developers, an increase in the average pay of software developers, with more of them getting full-time jobs and opportunities to work for employers they have never met physically.

“African developers are, on average, younger than in more mature markets. They work primarily in Android and web app development,” the report released in February stated.

On the ground at Safaricom, says George, there has been an increase in demand for not just general software developers, but well-skilled developers who can go beyond creating software.

He says there has been a higher demand for people who can connect things to create a solution and enable businesses serve customers better, for example, and bring ideas to life in ways that make sense for the immediate needs of businesses.

Before the war for software engineers started, there had been a realization at Safaricom itself of the need to have its own developers working on products and services.

The company has gradually moved from having apps like the Safaricom App developed by third-party vendors to entrusting them to an internal team. The result, with the Safaricom App being amongst the highest rated apps locally, has proven the managers right.

Having apps developed by the internal teams enables the company to react faster to issues raised by customers and to integrate other aspects of the business into it.

This has been the case with the M-PESA Super App, which has been fashioned as an all-in-one app, where other apps can be hosted, enabling users to access a range of services, such as motor vehicle insurance, SGR tickets, air tickets, and gift shops, and pay for the products or services without leaving the app.

“We’ve built the team to about 500 now and we feel it’s time to at least announce that we are making a dent not only in Kenya but in Africa and the universe,” says George.

For developers, perhaps the best thing about the war has been the increase in pay that comes with the natural effects of low supply when there is high demand.

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