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Talent Nation, a startup that trains African engineers in AI and places them with companies abroad, has raised an undisclosed pre-Seed round. Enza Capital and LocalGlobe co-led the round. Future Africa, Kaleo Ventures, Ajim Capital, Solving the World’s Greatest Problems, and Accelerate Africa also participated.
Co-founder and CEO Kesiah Valkin named Sir John Lazar, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Saul Klein, a European technology investor, among its backers. She said the company spent 18 months building before the announcement.
“Developing talent at scale is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. It is easy for us to say that Africa has enormous talent, but what’s really hard is building the infrastructure to actually find that talent and develop them to globally competitive standards,” said Kesiah Valkin, co-founder and CEO of Talent Nation.
Founded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Kesiah Valkin, Talent Nation is a global talent platform that trains, certifies, and places AI engineers from Africa with businesses abroad.
Notably, Aboyeji is a serial founder. He also co-founded Flutterwave in 2016 and helped develop the vehicle financing company Moove. Currently, he leads the venture firm Future Africa, which supports Talent Nation. Additionally, he serves on the advisory committee for Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent program.
Its training academy, Learn2Earn NG, has received more than 63,000 applications and assessed over 32,000 candidates. Fewer than 3% were selected. About 1,400 fellows are now training across nine campuses in Nigeria, and the programme charges no tuition fees.
Candidates first complete an online assessment, followed by in-person trials. The top performers are quickly matched with clients, while others may participate in programs lasting three, six, or twelve months that include projects, internships, and work experience.
Trainees do not pay upfront; instead, the companies that hire them cover the costs, which helps fund new trainees. Those who are employed later contribute to the training expenses of future cohorts. IHS Towers is one of the clients benefiting from this model.
“We want to change the economics of who gets to build with AI. The benefits of this technology should not be confined to frontier labs and corporations can afford the world’s most expensive engineering talent. They should be within reach of far more organisations, wherever they operate. And talented people should have a pathway into this industry regardless of where they happen to have been born,” said Kesiah Valkin.
This approach mirrors the first company Aboyeji co-founded. In 2014, he launched Andela to train African software developers for global tech firms, which later achieved a valuation of $1.5 billion after raising $200 million from investors led by SoftBank.
