True. However all of those are, as you point out, from either South Africa or Ghana. See my points regarding the power houses of Africa in the parent post.

Outside those, the comp-sci depts. in every uni I checked with were only teaching archaic languages, even by the standards of the day, or none at all. I'll concede, that in my case, that was long ago - but given I'm just hitting middle age, I believe it's still relevant, hence the tips I later gave.

TL'DR: if you're African, and not from either of those places or outright wealthy, good luck getting in. Ghana and RSA count, in most respects, as exceptions to the rule.

Just seen the full list, and there're a fair few from other countries - but given the relatively tiny number of names involved, I stand by my opinions

Mark Shuttleworth: white, British descent,

Elon Musk: white, Canadian/British descent,

Chris Pinkham and Benjamin Black (AWS): white,

Emanuel Derman: white,

J. R. R. Tolkien: white, British descent.

---

I'm not trying to say anything about race. But many of the examples you pointed out seemed to be of people of non-african descent. I don't think your examples say much about Africans in tech so much as it says something about people in positions of privilege having the opportunity to found companies.

I say this as a one-time white-foreigner living in South Africa, where I spent four years.

Having lived in South Africa, you will also know that South Africa houses an indigenous white population that has settled in the country ~ 400 years ago, roughly the same time that Europeans settled in America, and also the same time that the black tribes also migrated and arrived in South Africa (Zulu's, Xhosa's, Sotho's etc.)

But now for some reason "African" refers to only black people, and white Africans are priviledged and not worthy of mention. Would you follow that same logic for Americans?

*For technical correctness the Khoi-San settled in South Africa ~2000 years ago, but is a minority population in South Africa.

Thanks for this kabouseng. As a white South African whose ancestors arrived ~300 years ago, I was wondering how much longer before I was allowed to identify as "African".

It's not like I have anywhere else to call home.

People are reluctant to recognize the racism against white people. Maybe it will change with the time.

I'm a white South African Software Engineer, too. Family arrived here +- 200 years ago.

If that doesn't make me African, what does? I can promise you that if I go to Europe, I won't be considered European!

I usually take accusations of reverse racism with a pinch of salt, but there was recently a discussion on Twitter where a popular ex-radio host (Kay Sexwale, @kaysexwale), stated that whites cannot be Africans, nor can they lead political parties in Africa. Ordinarily someone like that would be regarded as a kook, but she in the last week, almost got a job as Chief of Staff to the Premier of Gauteng province. Also her assertions were not really questioned by black Africans on Twitter, if I recall correctly (some whites were, rightfully, quite offended).

There is a strong degree of vigilance required. However, it should also be admitted that many white South Africans don't make much of an effort to integrate, or to be constructive, instead resorting to constant belittlement, obstructionism and moaning. This combination of white intransigence, and nascent black African supremacism doesn't bode well for the future.

If giving up control over your country of birth without any form of violence doesn't show the most absolute effort to integrate, then I don't know what measures will convince you otherwise?

Here is the thing. For whatever reasons, right or wrong, most people understand 'African' to mean 'black'. Sucks. Egypt is not populated by black people, and people think of that as part of middle-east.

Most people are only consciously politically correct.

For what it's worth, the original title was asking where all the African developers are, and the top threads all so far talk about South Africa.

We're particularly myopic in the Northern Hemisphere when it comes to Africa, often seeing the Mediterranean coast and South Africa and skipping that middle part...

So while it truly is interesting to hear that there's a solid development community in South Africa, it doesn't speak to the larger question on why we see so little coming from the rest of the continent.

I can't really speak for anything north of the equator, but I have travelled fairly extensively in the southern half of Africa.

The impression I get as a visitor to many of these countries is that except for a few big cities it is just too difficult to guarantee power and telecoms access to bet your job on it.

Most people will find a job locally doing "boring" software since there is less risk. Working remotely for a company in the US/Europe requires them to understand your (african) problems which is always difficult.

If I am at the office and we have no power, my boss understands; If I am remote-working, will my "American/European" boss understand why I just lost a day?

The advantage of staying here (in SA) means that even if you are doing boring software, your salary is probably good enough to give you spectacular buying power compared to 99% of the planet.

As you move to more remote places, the salaries just keep increasing. I was recently looking at a job in Tete (Northern Mozambique) which paid around USD450k p.a.

So, I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but I think Africa is quiet mostly because the "boring" jobs pay disproportionately well --- the incentive to be an entrepreneur is mostly gone. (I say this as someone working at a startup of sorts)

I'm extremely interested in working somewhere remote/strange in Africa/other underdeveloped areas of the world (not even looking for anything notably well paying). I've tried a couple of times to search for relevant job boards and the like but haven't been able to find anything halfway decent. If you could go into a bit more detail about where one would look for that sort of thing/what the typical process is in that part of the world or shoot me an email at public at disastero.us, I would be tremendously grateful.

Thanks!

Edit: The bigger the shithole the better, really. I've been trying to find a method for searching for jobs in adverse environments for a while, but haven't been in any way successful.

So if you want to move somewhere off the beaten track your job choices are going to be:

1) Mining 2) Power/Electricity 3) Support for the above.

Most companies don't hire in the countries they operate in, since the skills just don't exist. Most sites are populated by a mix of European/South African/Indian expats who are there for a limited period (typically < 5 years)

The way to get into these types of jobs is to get hired by the European or South African companies that operate in these areas, and then ask for placement at your shithole of choice. The current rule of thumb is to ask for your SA salary * 4 or * 5 depending on how bad the place actually is.

At the moment there is is a lot of activity in Northen Zambia (copper) with companies like Yokogawa/Siemens/ABB looking for people.

Northern Mozambique is pretty active (coal/gas) with Vale/Jindal being the major mining houses and ABB/Siemens etc. providing the tech.

On the power generation side - South Africa has quite a lot of activity on the renewable side with Spanish and Danish companies taking the lead (Abengoa for solar esp.)

There is currently also a bit of a power generation boom in Ghana and Benin, but I don't know anyone directly involved.

Most of the work is in hardware, project management, or process control though. It is going to be much harder to find software only work.

EDIT: I forgot to mention - there might be more opportunity for software only work in banking. I know Barclays is currently busy with a big push up into Africa, but I am not very familiar with that industry.

A few notes/tips:

- If you live in a western country, try to get a remote job. Spend a few months in your remote position and see how you like it. If you like it, you can talk to your manager and ask if moving to wherever you like is feasible. Make sure you get good enough internet when you go, and learn enough about batteries and inverters to buy a power supply system (solar 12V batteries and a chinese power inverter will set you back 200USD and last for a good year at least).

- Send you resume to NGOs. Forget the startup crowd for a bit. Most people applying to NGOs are people with social/education/medical backgrounds, and IT skills are in very high demand, because nobody with IT skills ever applies to be sent to a remote place. I'm pretty sure almost any NGO will hire you if you can teach IT-related topics (programming, networks, systems...). Pay isn't great in general, but the experience makes up for it (also, the countries you'll visit are, by definition, not expensive to live in).

If you need contacts, I can give you some in Tanzania and Senegal even if my network here is a little more limited (finding my contact info is left as an exercise to the reader).

I used to work in the UK for a company founded by Mo Ibrahim[1]. I got to travel to SA a few times and to Tanzania as well as Egypt and various middle eastern countries, as well as Europe and further afield. Part of that company still exists under a different name[2]. There aren't a lot of jobs in telecoms in Africa, but the ones that do exist are interesting and will get you around a lot.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Ibrahim [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtel

I concur - setting up a power backup system was my first task when moving here (Tanzania), and it isn't a simple nor cheap barrier to overcome.

That is a pretty impressive salary, even for western standards! Maybe I should consider moving to Mozambique :)

Tete is a shithole though --- maybe if I was young and single, but definitely not a place to raise a family.

I work with a really great Nigerian programmer, if that helps, and one of our project managers is from Mauritius. My boss (CIO) was born in Tanzania, but is of Indian descent. I previously hired a South African coder.

The one thing all those people have in common: every one of them left Africa for better opportunities elsewhere (US, France, Brazil).

I work with a really great Nigerian programmer, if that helps, and one of our project managers is from Mauritius. My boss (CIO) was born in Tanzania, but is of Indian descent.

Lets not forget that this narrative was forced upon white South African's by the liberal west through sanctions and boicots. So if there is a genocide, it will fall squarely on the west's conscience.

Lets also not forget that the reason why America and Australia does not have majority non-white populations is because they exterminated their native populations. An inconvenient fact (google general Custer and aboriginea hunting permits).

Edit - spelling

And yet most white people in South Africa only have a South African passport and are not citizens of any other country. How does that not make them African?

Have you looked back 300 to 400 yrs of South Africa's history before labeling all these people not African? If this is true, then American whites are not American. You can be white and be African.

You are being racist. People born and bred in Africa are of African descent. Skin color is irrelevant and to think that skin color makes a difference to how "african" you are, makes you racist.

> OffTopic - J. R. R. Tolkien - South African, Lord of the Rings

Born from British parents living in the Boer province of South-Africa, a British colony, so not really South-Africa per se. And he returned to the UK eventually for and after WW1.

Feel free to modify Wikipedia and cite your sources then, if it's all fantasy.

The point is that JRR Tolkien was an Englishman, not a South African—even though he was born in SA.

> ps. If the Mayflower ship brings British settlers to the U.S. and they have a kid in the U.S, is that kid not American?

Irrelevant example. South Africa was a British colony during Tolkien's youth, and I have never heard him being refered as a "South African" - he is born from British parents who happened to live in South Africa for a while, and is clearly identified as a British writer everywhere I know. It's extremely strange to call him "South African" and I do not know where you even got this notion. Even Tolkien refered himself as being English in terms of ethnicity. Check his writings before calling people ignorant.

Believe what you want.

> The Orange Free State (Dutch: Oranje-Vrijstaat Afrikaans: Oranje-Vrystaat) was an independent Boer sovereign republic in southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, and later a British colony and a province of the Union of South Africa.

EDIT: I noticed you changed your first message without any "EDIT" notice after I posted this answer. This is not very well viewed on HN.

Adding a name to the list Theo de Raadt from OpenBSD and OpenSSH is also from euro african descent.

South Africa is one of the three richest countries in Africa (with Egypt and Morocco). There's a lot of Africa between those three corners. From your list, only Herman Chinery-Hesse is not from South Africa.

There's a lot of untapped potential in Africa that's practically invisible.