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Farhan Yahya
Farhan Yahya

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I am an African developer, Ask Me Anything!

You might wanna know how it feels :) ready for all your question

Top comments (15)

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almenon profile image
Almenon

What is the tech culture like in Africa? For example in the US it's pretty laid back - you can come into work anytime before the first meeting and you can wear shorts into work on Fridays. Similar there?

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dochan profile image
Farhan Yahya

As far as I know, the average time to report to work over here is before 9am and trousers are used throughout the weekdays.

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almenon profile image
Almenon

Okay, that's pretty similar to here except we call them pants :)

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bmitch profile image
Bill Mitchell

What do you feel is the biggest misconception about developers from Africa?

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dochan profile image
Farhan Yahya • Edited

African developers are underestimated. Lot's of people don't know how powerful we are. We build very advanced stuff

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bwb profile image
Ben Fox

Do developers in Ghana work mostly for local companies or international? How hard is it to find a dev job locally?

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Farhan Yahya

Finding a dev job locally is quite hard because unemployment rates in the country are high, hence people stick to their jobs for as long as possible making it hard for others to find open positions. Again over here, it's mostly about who you know not what you know.

For international jobs, I'll say no. It's even hard for us to leave our continent but easy for others to come in :(

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bwb profile image
Ben Fox

Gotcha, thank you for sharing!

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dochan profile image
Farhan Yahya

Yup, mostly from Avicii, Imagine Dragons and Khalid

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Jono Battle

Hey there, do you find the path for developers in Africa is always through University? And are Universities teaching up to date courses on how to be a developer in todays market?

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dochan profile image
Farhan Yahya

I'll say it used to be that way just because some time ago exposure to information was quite low. But for now, there's more exposure to info than you can think of.

Developers in Africa mostly these days are self-taught but the only difference between the self-taught developer and a University student is the fact that most of the self-taught developers turn out to be just coders with no interest of self-learning some crazy mathematics or algorithms.

And when it comes to our Universities, we are introduced to more info(even AI) we need to become very experienced and fit the market but the problem is rather with most of our students, we mostly learn for grades and when there are no more grades to be attained, we quit learning. bAD hABIT :(

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Bertil Muth

How did you learn to program?

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Farhan Yahya • Edited

I'm quite of a tech enthusiast. Started programming at the age of 14 and now I'm 18 years of age. That makes it 4 years of experience. I'm currently a Second-year Computer Science university student.
I personally learn from books but first I used to watch YouTube videos till I realized I wanted more than that. We have good lecturers too.
In Africa, there are several educational bodies that teach all this stuff and gradually we are developing technologically. The only problem here is the risk and fear to start a business :)

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Ben Fox

Where do you live in Africa :)?

What is the local tech scene like where you live?

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dochan profile image
Farhan Yahya

I live in Ghana which is in the western part of Africa.

When it comes to tech, We got introduced to most of it when the internet got booming but the thing was that few were educated to a level of adapting to it. But guess what, for the past decade we've improved in technology as many other countries in the world. There used to be a huge fear of starting up a company but these days the number of startups has really increased with Jumia going for IPO and being listed on NYSE.

The reason our countries aren't developing as expected is the fact that our leaders being old timers don't have much interest in the tech world and are c҉o҉r҉r҉u҉p҉t҉.