A silent war broke out soon after Microsoft launched its Africa Development Centre in Nairobi in March.

The fighting was for the crop of young software engineers in Kenya and the most effective weapon was money.

For George Njuguna, the Director, Information Technology at Safaricom (pictured above), the words “war for talent” were the perfect description of the phenomenon he was witnessing as software engineers, especially the really good ones, migrated for better pay.

“We’ve seen quite a lot of our developers being poached by big, big, multinationals, like Microsoft, AWS (Amazon Web Services), and others, as well as many local companies, banks, fintechs, who are hiring developer talent,” Njuguna told the Safaricom Newsroom.

The “war for talent” was among the first items on the agenda at the Safaricom Engineering Summit, an event organized by the company to bring together a range of stakeholders in the sector, from technology companies to learning institutions and the much sought-after engineers.

Apart from the entry of the multinationals, the war for software engineering talent has been driven by the accelerated digitization that was necessitated by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Google’s Africa Developer Ecosystem Report for 2021 says three other factors contributed to the positive developments in the developer community: the growth of local startups, increased demand for remote tech talent and increased demand for the use of the internet by local businesses, which in turn hired developers to help them grow their businesses online.

The result has been an increase in the number of developers, an increase in the average pay of software developers, with more of them getting full-time jobs and opportunities to work for employers they have never met physically.

“African developers are, on average, younger than in more mature markets. They work primarily in Android and web app development,” the report released in February stated.

On the ground at Safaricom, says George, there has been an increase in demand for not just general software developers, but well-skilled developers who can go beyond creating software.

He says there has been a higher demand for people who can connect things to create a solution and enable businesses serve customers better, for example, and bring ideas to life in ways that make sense for the immediate needs of businesses.

Before the war for software engineers started, there had been a realization at Safaricom itself of the need to have its own developers working on products and services.

The company has gradually moved from having apps like the Safaricom App developed by third-party vendors to entrusting them to an internal team. The result, with the Safaricom App being amongst the highest rated apps locally, has proven the managers right.

Having apps developed by the internal teams enables the company to react faster to issues raised by customers and to integrate other aspects of the business into it.

This has been the case with the M-PESA Super App, which has been fashioned as an all-in-one app, where other apps can be hosted, enabling users to access a range of services, such as motor vehicle insurance, SGR tickets, air tickets, and gift shops, and pay for the products or services without leaving the app.

“We’ve built the team to about 500 now and we feel it’s time to at least announce that we are making a dent not only in Kenya but in Africa and the universe,” says George.

For developers, perhaps the best thing about the war has been the increase in pay that comes with the natural effects of low supply when there is high demand.

“LinkedIn nowadays is just buzzing,” said Mbugua Njihia at the Safaricom Engineering Summit, with people announcing new jobs and promotions, which is exciting for the community.

For George, he is happy that the Kenyans who he has had to let go have gone on to do well at the multinationals and other companies and to subsequently open doors for other Kenyans.

“I have a ton of people who’ve gone to Ireland, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, South Africa. We’re seeing that a lot of people are realizing that we have a lot of smart people and great engineers,” says George.

Even as it recruited more engineers, the company was forced to make adjustments for those who remained. It meant increasing pay and creating arrangements where they are paid based on performance.

When the company asked them, ‘What would make you stay here?’ says Paul Kasimu, the Chief Human Resource Officer, some engineers said they deemed more autonomy in their work to enable them grow and improved leadership as key.

Paul Kasimu, the Chief Human Resource Officer at Safaricom, has learnt a lot from the changes that have come with the increased demand for developers.

From his experience in Human Resources, he said, most people (about 67 per cent) leave employers because of conflicts with their line managers, not the companies, and that for him meant that there was a need to re-evaluate and train the managers working with the developers.

Paul sees the competition as a natural consequence of the increasing complexity of work that comes with the digital age. That, he says, was happening even before the onset of Covid-19.

“If you ask me about what is work, I will tell you WWW. Work is changing, the workforce is changing, and the workplace is changing,” says Paul.

From his experience and conversations with colleagues across the continent, he says, they are increasingly dealing with a generation of workers who are not interested in pension, insurance and other perks that kept older generations anchored to one job for life.

So even as they recruit in droves, the tech companies are alive to the reality that the employees are likely to leave when opportunities arise.

For Paul, the realization has been that when companies like Safaricom train software engineers, they are not training for an organization, but for an ecosystem.

At the end of the day, he said, “There is a skills shortage.”

For George, Paul and other leaders, the Safaricom Engineering Summit was the first step in creating a community of engineers.

The plan, Paul says, is to create a Digital Academy in partnership with the big tech companies in Nairobi and universities around Kenya to train and certify the software engineers.

“I wrote to about five universities and several corporates and we want to launch an industry-wide partnership and a collaboration where we can start driving the development of future-fit talent,” Paul told participants at the Safaricom Engineering Summit.

“If Kenya is to become the Silicon Savannah, it will not happen without a strong software engineering community,” says George.

When he looks at the environment now, George no longer regrets the opportunity he missed to become a lawyer as there can only be good things in the future for young software engineers.

“The war for talent is over. When I look at the battlefield, talent has won, not organisations,” says Paul.