ForLoop Africa is one of the largest developer community
across the continent for every
and any software developer. The
community was founded by a group of software developers and tech professionals,
led by Ridwan Olalere, Prosper Otemuyiwa, Ire Aderinokun, and Christopher
Nwaba, in 2016 in Nigeria, but it has spread across Africa, as a platform for
people to share knowledge, connect with each other and grow and create
opportunities to advance each other’s career.
In Nigeria, ForLoop Africa is the largest developer group connecting
local chapters with members across eight African countries and a 2,500
user-strong Slack community. Since being founded by Ridwan Olalere in 2016, the
ForLoop community has held hundreds of meetups, trainings and hackathons
yearly. The non-profit has also remained front and center of advocacy
conversations in Nigeria. An interesting thing to note about ForLoop is its
position in every stage of a developer’s career path whether from beginner to
full-fledged professional.
In the words of Leila Janah, “Talent is equally
distributed, opportunity is not,” and this influenced the community’s reach
into universities to find and support talent, along with attracting mentors and
experienced professionals. Since ForLoop does not restrict on software or
programming language, the developers, most of whom are self-taught, get their
first taste of modern software development through interactions with ForLoop
mentors and senior developers.
Through its university program, ForLoop Africa is able to support
would-be developers at the most formative stages of their careers while
providing them with access to the larger community for networking and
mentorship. As they improve their skills, ForLoop offers access to freelance
work which helps them stay at the forefront of software engineering and build a
work history in the field. As more universities clamoured for their own
community, most of the ForLoop Campus communities morphed into state-based
ForLoop communities in Nigeria and even some in other African countries.
Today, Olalere has stepped down
from the board and handed over to Prosper Otemuyiwa to continue the leadership
of ForLoop Africa. This is based on his idea to create a sustainable community
not centered around an individual but every person in the community.
Across the globe, communities remain critical to sustainable
developer ecosystems, the ForLoop Africa model of accompanying developers
through every stage of professional growth, positions it as a “village” that
truly “raises” the child, fulfilling the initial vision of building an
inclusive, engaging and vibrant community of developers across Africa. ForLoop Africa has spurred many to
stay abreast of the latest technological trends while encouraging them to hone
their craft of software development
In few years, what started as persuading people to attend the first
community meeting became an event people attended from other parts of Africa
and students demanding for a community meeting in their schools. Alongside Andela, Devcenter, and Hotels .ng’s Internship
Programmes, ForLoop is one of the biggest contributors to the growth of
technical talent in Nigeria and Africa.
You can become a
member of the ForLoop Developers community here
Source:
Techcabal
Pulse
Benjamin Dada