Aboyeji launches Talent Nation, targets one million AI engineers

Aboyeji's newest venture echoes Andela, the company he launched in 2014 and left in 2016, which trained software engineers across six African countries with backing from investors including Mark Zuckerberg, Serena Williams, and former US Vice President Al Gore. Andela later expanded beyond training only African developers in 2021. Talent Nation's first program, Learn2Earn, has already drawn 63,000 applications with less than 3% selected, and it does not charge tuition. The startup is taking off with seed money from Kenyan investor Enza Capital and London-headquartered fund LocalGlobe, though Aboyeji declined to say how much. Kesiah Valkin, the company's CEO and co-founder, said developing talent at scale is an extraordinarily complex undertaking, noting that while it is easy to say Africa has enormous talent, building the infrastructure to find and develop it to globally competitive standards is hard. Aboyeji's goal of one million AI engineers over the next 10 years is set against the backdrop of dizzying capital being raised by AI companies in Silicon Valley, which he sees as a market opportunity that could surpass his previous endeavors.