As the need for cloud computing, DevOps and software development goes through the roof, automating the management, scaling and deployment of containerized applications is being highly sought after, making Kubernetes skills vital.

To harness Kubernetes skills on African soil, Andela Inc. has developed skilling programs with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, according to Ross O’Neill (pictured, left), senior program manager at Andela.

“We’ve always invested in up-skilling an opportunity and invested in different skills for African talent,” O’Neill said. “This is building on that legacy, and we see huge demand for Kubernetes skills. Ninety-percent of our roles that get created by companies with Andela require Kubernetes as a skill. This is where it makes sense in terms of a strategic learning partnership. We want to provide a path to success for those talents. But also for CNCF, we’re growing the community in Africa.”

O’Neill and Natasha Woods (right), senior director of communications at Andela, spoke with theCUBE Research’s Savannah Peterson and Rob Strechay at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the importance of Kubernetes skills in the modern digital landscape, and how Andela and CNCF aid the penetration of this expertise in Africa. (* Disclosure below.)

How Andela pushes Kubernetes skills in Africa

Since Kubernetes is a key technology in modern application development and deployment, professionals skilled in this field are highly sought after in industries ranging from tech startups to large enterprises. As a result, Andela is in full gear to enhance Kubernetes mastery through its extensive African talent marketplace, Woods pointed out. 

“Andela is a private tech talent marketplace,” she said. “We have 150,000 technologists spanned over 135 countries. We help connect that amazing talent for contingent jobs with great companies that are looking for engineers, data scientists, developers, you kind of name it. We were founded 10 years ago in Nigeria on the mission or the thought that brilliance is evenly distributed across the globe but opportunities are not. We’re a unicorn company, and we’re thriving. About 60% of our talent is still based in Africa and Latin America — two great emerging markets to really tap.” 

To become competitive in the evolving technology landscape, Kubernetes skills should be top of mind. As a result, Andela has come up with learning programs with various companies, such as Nvidia Corp., meant for African talent, according to Woods.

“I used to work at CNCF, and so coming to Andela and listening to the training programs that Ross has put together with companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS and Meta, I was like there’s a big need for Kubernetes,” she said. “So, I called Chris and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we combine resources and bring these trainings to a number of African developers?’ There’s over 700,000 African developers, and we’ve actually trained 15% of that population.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA: 

(* Disclosure: Cloud Native Computing Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CNCF nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE