42 Luanda: Bringing a Tech & Start-up Culture Locally!

Sitting proudly on Angola’s coastline, overlooking the Atlantic ocean, Luanda serves as Angola’s capital city. A major cultural and industrial center in Africa, Luanda is the continent’s 7th richest city, and boasts a population of nearly 10 million, almost a third of the country’s total. A little over year ago, it became the site of a new 42 campus -the network’s 1st in sub-saharan Africa- offering students from all walks of life an opportunity to learn coding.

“Luanda is actually very small in terms of landmass, however it is by far the most populated region in Angola,” Nyanga Tiytapeka, head of 42 Luanda tells us. Located in the North of the country, the Angolan capital is the city’s main cultural and economic hub, with almost all of the economic opportunities available in the country outside of Agriculture being there.

“It was strategic for us to open 42 in Luanda, both because of the population density and the economic opportunities” — Nyanga Tiytapeka.

The idea of establishing a 42 campus at the heart of the Angolan capital originated with Dr. Edson Barreto, the current Cabinet Director for the President of the Republic of Angola. Working to build digital tools to allow Angolans to access different types of trainings more easily, he and Nyanga Tyitapeka quickly noticed that Angola was lacking in IT talents. “It was very difficult for us to find IT professionals in Angola. Most of the software engineering work done by Angolan companies is outsourced to service providers in Cape Verde or Portugal,” Tyitapeka recalls.

Wanting to address this issue, Dr. Edson came across an article about 42 Lisboa in a local newspaper. After conducting further research, both he and Tyitapeka became convinced that 42’s innovative method could help bridge the skill gap in Angola efficiently. They eventually reached out to 42 in Portugal, before being put through to 42’s main teams.

“What was really appealing to us is that we did not need teachers nor books to set up the campus. Finding qualified teachers and quality learning materials in Angola would have been very challenging.” — Nyanga Tyitapeka, head of 42 Luanda.

While 42’s methodology can draw a certain amount of skepticism, 42 Luanda’s integration in the local education landscape went pretty smoothly. With virtually no competition in the region and a strong demand for developers, the campus’ opening was eagerly anticipated amongst the local population. The enthusiasm was clearly reflected in the numbers: within its first 3 months, 42 Luanda received nearly 25,000 applicants.

Moving forward, the ambition is to turn 42 Luanda into a proper start-up hub, while keeping close ties with Angola’s big companies. “We’ve already had a number of companies from specific sectors reach out to us expressing interest in hiring our students. Nevertheless, a lot of our students have interesting business ideas, and we’d like to give them the platform they need to go down the entrepreneurship route,” Nyanga Tyitapeka concludes. “In Angola, the culture is still very much about joining big companies — a lot of our students want to join the National Oil Company — however we also want to bring the start-up culture here !”