By Kingsley Samuel
As Africa’s digital economy expands rapidly, businesses across Nigeria are also facing a shortage of specialised developers needed to build and scale digital solutions.
Country Head, Zoho Nigeria, Kehinde Ogundare, has warned that unless Nigeria adopts smarter and more scalable approaches to software development, the country risks becoming merely a consumer of global digital technologies rather than a builder of them.
Speaking on “Beyond the vibe: Bridging Africa’s Build Divide with Intelligent Infrastructure,” Ogundare argued that artificial intelligence, AI-powered low-code development tools are emerging as a critical solution to Africa’s widening technical talent gap.
According to him, while global conversations around AI have focused heavily on “vibe coding” and automation hype, African countries must instead focus on how such technologies can practically address long-standing infrastructure and capacity challenges.
“Africa has always found its own way around barriers,” he said, citing Kenya’s mobile money platform, M-Pesa, as an example of how the continent previously turned limitations into innovation opportunities.
He noted that Africa’s internet economy was projected to contribute $180 billion to the continent’s GDP by 2025, while cloud adoption across African markets is growing between 25 and 30 percent annually, faster than in Europe and North America.
However, he stressed that the technical workforce needed to sustain that growth remains inadequate.“
The human infrastructure required to sustain this momentum is not keeping pace,” Ogundare stated.According to him, the continent’s AI challenge is not a lack of ambition, but the widening gap between technological advancement and the availability of skilled professionals capable of supporting it.
He cited findings from a 2024 ICT Skills Survey which showed that more than 28,000 high-end developer and cybersecurity roles in South Africa had to be outsourced because local talent was unavailable.
He added that although Nigeria and Kenya recorded developer population growth of 28 per cent and 33 per cent respectively between 2023 and 2024, the figures still represent only a small fraction of the global developer workforce.
Ogundare also pointed to persistent infrastructure constraints such as poor electricity supply, high connectivity costs and inadequate digital training investments as barriers slowing Africa’s participation in the AI economy.
According to him, AI-assisted low-code development platforms can help bridge that gap by allowing businesses and entrepreneurs with limited technical expertise to build functional applications using natural language prompts instead of traditional programming.
He explained that such tools could help small businesses automate operations, improve logistics management and digitise customer services without maintaining large in-house development teams.
“Tools that extend the productive capacity of existing builders and draw non-technical entrepreneurs into the act of building are critical,” he said.
Ogundare further argued that Africa’s digital future would depend on what he described as an “intelligent layering” approach that combines accessible AI-powered tools for small businesses, robust development platforms for large-scale systems, and sustained long-term investment in local technical talent.
He warned against viewing AI-assisted development as a replacement for deeper infrastructure investments.
“Vibe coding and AI-assisted development cannot paper over the infrastructure deficits that still constrain the continent,” he stated.
According to him, Africa’s AI market is projected to reach $16.5 billion by 2030, and the continent must ensure that local organisations actively participate in building that future rather than depending entirely on imported technologies.
He added that lowering the cost and complexity of software development could expand opportunities for more Africans to shape the continent’s digital transformation.
