Holberton School arrives in Johannesburg, South Africa, in January 2022!
We are thrilled to announce the opening of Holberton School South Africa. This new campus will open in January 2022 in Johannesburg. This is our second new campus announcement this year already, only a week after we announced a new campus in France. The new campus will be the 3rd Holberton School campus in Africa and the 32nd in the world.
With the opening of a new campus in Johannesburg, we will help with the pent-up demand for qualified tech talent and education in South Africa and pursue our mission to help fill the IT talent gap in Africa.
To get an idea of how big this talent gap is, we simply need to look at the number of software developers in Africa: 690,000 (with only about 130,000 in South Africa). This is compared to 4.5 million software developers in the US and 6 million in Europe.
With its mass adoption of new technologies, Africa has the opportunity to create the next disruptive startups and the global leaders of tomorrow. But first it needs to close this huge gap separating them from the US and Europe, especially as the demand for software developers is growing rapidly globally. For instance, the demand for blockchain – the technology behind many cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin – engineers increases by 517% every year.
We are very proud to help fill this gap, and with this new campus, we are on our path to training 1 millions new students all over the world by 2030.
“South Africa is an important step for the development of Holberton School in Africa. 100% of the first graduates from Holberton School Tunisia -which was the first campus to open in Africa- have found a job, both from local and foreign companies. We are very excited to expand our disruptive educational model to new countries and help fill the talent gap that prevents companies from hiring great software engineers and building their next products” says Julien Barbier, CEO of Holberton.
In order to make sure everyone has access to quality education, Holberton School South Africa has partnered with Singular System. Singular System is specialized in developing, implementing, and managing software that enables their clients to eliminate risks and complexity in their business processes, creating measurable value. Some of their clients include AddEndum, AllanGray, and DDS. The company will offer full scholarships to the first 20 Holberton School South Africa students as part of this partnership.
The school aims to enroll around 30 students for the forthcoming cohort who will follow a 12-month program. The school aims to train highly qualified software engineers to meet the growing demand for IT jobs in the country.
Please join us in welcoming this new campus! Welcome to the Holberton School network, and we can’t wait to see how the future graduates of Holberton School South Africa will change the world!