Mark Zuckerberg Partners with Andela and Africa

Mark Zuckerberg Partners with Andela and Africa

Mark Zuckerberg’s newly formed $48 billion venture, the ‘Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’, has announced its first lead investment of $24 million dollars in African start-up Andela. Not only does Andela now have the internet’s most powerful man backing them, but GV (formerly Google Ventures) is also in on the investment!

The two year-old New York based start-up business works with communities in Africa, training software developers in Nairobi (Kenya) and Lagos (Nigeria). At the end of this four-year intensive training, these developers are given full-time roles within international companies – the likes of IBM, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. This new funding will help Andela expand its network of developers on the African continent. It won’t be long now until we hear of their launch in a third African country!
In celebration of their daughter’s birth, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced the launch of their new Initiative in December 2015. They will use it to give 99 percent of their Facebook shares over their lifetimes to support the mission of unlocking human potential and promoting equality. “We must make long term investments over 25, 50 or even 100 years. The greatest challenges require very long time horizons and cannot be solved by short term thinking” Zuckerberg has said. The partnership with Andela is the very beginning of this journey.
The fact that Zuckerberg’s first lead investment is focused on Africa and its communities shows his and the Initiative’s belief in the continent’s potential. Movemeback, Mark Zuckerberg and Andela certainly have a driving mission in common – the social and economic development of Africa.
“We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. Andela’s mission is to close this gap.” – Mark Zuckerberg
 
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 
Kristina Dörr is a first year Business student at Oxford Brookes University and current Intern at Movemeback.