How Good Is Tech Talent in Africa, and How Do You Find the Strongest?
The gap is not in the talent. It is in what you can see of it from a distance. The strongest are as strong as the strongest you would hire at home. You can see it in what clients do once someone is in their team: in 2025, 1 in 45 ongoing roles at Tunga ended because the match didn't work, and about half of ongoing placements since November 2022 have run more than a year.
Africa had about 716,000 professional developers in 2021 (Google and Accenture), but the signals you would use at home to spot the strongest, a known university, a known employer, a referral, are mostly missing when you hire from abroad. Tunga staffs digital professionals from across Africa. Everyone it proposes has passed a selection, and you interview the shortlist yourself before you choose.
What takes the place of the signals you can't see
The degree and the employer on a CV may mean little to you, so on paper the strongest people look much like everyone else. The selection is what separates them: everyone Tunga proposes has passed proof of identity, technical tests and a review of code they wrote, among the other steps on how Tunga selects professionals. Many of the professionals in the pool have worked for European or American clients before. You then interview the shortlist yourself, usually 3 candidates or more, and you can add your own test.
How quality shows after the start
A selection is a prediction. Whether it held shows once the person is working in your team.
- Clients rarely stop because the match is wrong. In 2025, 1 in 45 ongoing roles at Tunga ended because the match didn't work. A role is a position a client fills through Tunga without an end date; it continues when Tunga places a successor.
- Most clients keep their professional for a long time. About half of ongoing placements since November 2022 have run more than a year, and about 1 in 4 more than two years.
- Few professionals leave for another job. Supplier turnover is a common complaint: in a 2025 study of 652 Dutch IT sourcing relationships, clients named it as a weakness in 22% of them (Eraneos/Whitelane Dutch IT Sourcing Study). At Tunga, about 1 in 56 placements ended in 2025 because the professional left for another job.
In the first 4 weeks, either side can end the engagement at one working day's notice. More figures are on Tunga in numbers.
How many there are
The two counts measure different groups, so they are best read side by side:
- About 716,000 professional developers (2021). Google and Accenture's Africa Developer Ecosystem report, the newest count of people working as developers. The largest communities are in Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa.
- 4.7 million people with coding skills (2024). BCG's count, mainly from GitHub, includes students, researchers and self-taught coders. It grew about 21% a year between 2019 and 2024, the fastest of the five continents BCG compared.
The first number is closer to how many people work as developers today. The second shows where the next generation comes from. Why companies look to Africa in the first place is on why work with digital professionals in Africa.
Niche and legacy stacks
Because the pool is large, it also covers niche and legacy stacks such as SAP, Salesforce, Odoo or COBOL, in smaller numbers, so that search can take a bit longer. Which roles and stacks the pool covers is on roles, stacks and countries.
Where Tunga fits
Tunga takes the staffing side off the plate of companies that need digital professionals: software engineers, AI operators, product managers and other digital roles, from across Africa. The client directs the work. Tunga handles finding and vetting, contracts, payments and compliance, onboarding, keeping people, and replacing them when someone leaves or it isn't working. The professionals are independent contractors or employed in their own country through an employer of record, and work remotely from their own country; the client has one contract, with Tunga, and a delivery manager who checks in with both sides. In 2025, about 1 in 56 placements ended because the professional left for another job. Founded in 2015; 3,500 professionals across 38 African countries and 300+ client companies, as of September 2026.
Tunga is not the right fit when the role has to be on site, when the work means talking to your clients in a language other than English or French, or when saving on cost is the main reason you're looking.
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