Top 13 Software Developers in Africa
Meet Africa’s most impressive software developers—ranked for skill, impact, and innovation in the global tech scene. ↓
Africa is emerging as a global tech powerhouse, with a new generation of software engineers, AI researchers, startup founders, and open-source contributors driving innovation across the continent.
From groundbreaking AI labs and billion-dollar startups to influential blogs, GitHub repos, and coding bootcamps, African developers are making waves in both local and international tech scenes. Below is a curated list of the top 13 software developers from across Africa, recognized for their impact in open-source contributions, technical leadership in startups (while still coding), developer education, work at top tech companies, or achievements in international coding competitions:
- Tope Awotona
- Timnit Gebru
- Makinde Adeagbo
- Karim Beguir
- Ire Aderinokun
- Raindolf Owusu
- Rana el Kaliouby
- Moustapha Cisse
- Prosper Otemuyiwa
- Mark Essien
- Abdigani Diriye
- Ada Nduka Oyom
- Shakir Mohamed
Now, let’s delve deeper into their backgrounds and accomplishments, along with links to their online profiles:
Tope Awotona
Nationality: Nigerian (US-based)
Tope is the founder and CEO of Calendly, a scheduling tool valued at over $1 billion after its latest funding round.
A rare Black tech unicorn founder, Awotona built Calendly from his own savings in 2013 into a platform used by millions globally to simplify meeting scheduling. Under his leadership, Calendly reached unicorn status and made Awotona one of the most successful African-born tech entrepreneurs. He remains actively involved in the product’s development and growth.
- LinkedIn: Tope Awotona
- Twitter: @TopeAwotona
Timnit Gebru
Nationality: Ethiopian
Timnit is an AI researcher and advocate known for her work on algorithmic bias and ethics in AI.
As co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, she highlighted issues of bias in large language models – a stance that led to her controversial departure from Google in 2020. She has since founded the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) to independently research ethical AI. Gebru also co-founded Black in AI, fostering diversity in tech, and was named one of Time 100 most influential people in 2022 for her fearless advocacy.
- LinkedIn: Timnit Gebru
- Twitter (X): @timnitGebru
Makinde Adeagbo
Nationality: Nigerian
Makinde is a seasoned software engineer who has worked at Facebook, Microsoft, and Pinterest.
In 2015 he founded /dev/color, a nonprofit fellowship for Black software engineers in the US, which has since supported over 600 engineers in career growth. Makinde’s technical roots are strong: at Facebook he was a key engineer on News Feed, and at Pinterest he led infrastructure teams. With /dev/color, he applied his coding skills to build a community platform and personally mentored many members. Adeagbo is also active in investing and advising startups. His work at the intersection of big tech engineering and diversity advocacy makes him a standout leader among African developers in the diaspora.
- LinkedIn: Makinde Adeagbo
- Twitter (X): @makinde
Karim Beguir
Nationality: Tunisian
Karim is the co-founder and CEO of InstaDeep, an AI startup from Tunisia that achieved one of Africa’s biggest tech exits.
In 2023, InstaDeep was acquired by BioNTech for approximately $680 million, underscoring its cutting-edge work in AI for enterprise and biotech. Beguir, a mathematician by training, left a finance career to build an AI company in North Africa and grew InstaDeep to 400+ employees across continents. He also mentors the next generation of AI researchers through initiatives like Deep Learning Indaba.
- LinkedIn: Karim Beguir
- Twitter (X): @kbeguir
Ire Aderinokun
Nationality: Nigerian
Ire is a self-taught frontend developer and Nigeria’s first female Google Developer Expert in web technologies.
As co-founder and COO/VP Engineering of Helicarrier (formerly BuyCoins Africa), a crypto-fintech startup, she still actively codes and leads engineering teams. Ire gained renown through her technical writing on her blog “BitsofCode”, which has educated developers worldwide. She also champions diversity in tech – offering scholarships and mentoring women in web development. A frequent tech conference speaker, Ire has become a role model for developers across Africa through her coding expertise and community work.
- LinkedIn: Ire Aderinokun
- Twitter (X): @ireaderinokun
- Website/Blog: bitsofco.de
Raindolf Owusu
Nationality: Ghanaian
Raindolf is often dubbed “the Mark Zuckerberg of Accra” for his early start in software entrepreneurship in West Africa.
A self-taught developer, he created Anansi Browser in 2012 – one of Africa’s first web browsers – optimized for low internet conditions. He later founded OasisWebSoft and built Bisa, a mobile health app that allows Ghanaians to consult doctors remotely. Raindolf’s innovations earned him a spot on Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 (2015). He actively codes across multiple programming languages and contributes to open-source. As a tech blogger and speaker, he advocates for “frugal innovation” – building solutions tailored to Africa’s needs with minimal resources. Owusu continues to develop software products aimed at social impact and inspires young Ghanaian coders through tech community events.
- LinkedIn: Raindolf Owusu
- Twitter (X): @raindolf
Rana el Kaliouby
Nationality: Egyptian
Rana is an AI scientist and entrepreneur, best known as co-founder and former CEO of Affectiva, the pioneer of Emotion AI technology.
With a PhD from Cambridge, she built Affectiva to develop AI that can understand human emotions from facial and vocal expressions – widely applied in advertising, automotive, and mental health. In 2021, Affectiva was acquired by Smart Eye, a Swedish firm, in a multimillion-dollar deal to combine forces in human-centric AI. Rana (author of Girl Decoded) is an advocate for diversity in tech and has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for her groundbreaking work in Emotion AI.
- LinkedIn: Rana el Kaliouby
- Twitter (X): @kalioubys
- Podcast: pioneersof.ai
Moustapha Cisse
Nationality: Senegalese
Moustapha is an AI researcher who led Google’s AI Center in Accra, Ghana – Google’s first AI lab in Africa.
A former Facebook (Meta) researcher, he specializes in machine learning and its applications to social good. Cisse founded the African Masters of Machine Intelligence (AMMI) program to train a new generation of African AI experts, reflecting his commitment to capacity-building. In 2023, he transitioned to entrepreneurship by founding Kêra (an AI-driven health platform), continuing to apply AI to solve African challenges. Moustapha has published influential research and advocates globally for inclusive AI development.
- LinkedIn: Moustapha Cisse
- Twitter (X): @Moustapha_6C
Prosper Otemuyiwa
Nationality: Nigerian
Prosper (known online as “@unicodeveloper”) is a full-stack developer and open-source advocate.
He gained global attention in 2016 as one of the top contributors on GitHub, famously outranking Facebook’s engineers in a public leaderboard. A former developer advocate at Auth0 and Microsoft MVP, Prosper co-founded ForLoop Africa, one of the continent’s largest developer communities, as well as Eden Life – a tech-enabled services startup where he is CTO. He’s created popular OSS libraries and regularly speaks at international tech conferences. Prosper’s mentorship and community-building have helped thousands of African developers break into open source.
- LinkedIn: Prosper Otemuyiwa
- Twitter (X): @unicodeveloper
- GitHub: unicodeveloper
Mark Essien
Nationality: Nigerian
Mark is a software engineer turned entrepreneur, best known as the founder of Hotels.ng – Nigeria’s leading hotel booking platform.
Teaching himself to code, he built Hotels.ng in 2013 to bring Nigeria’s hospitality industry online, and as CEO he still participates in the technical architecture of the platform. Mark is passionate about developing talent: he launched a remote internship (HNG Internship) that has trained thousands of African developers. Under his leadership, Hotels.ng scaled to list 10,000+ hotels, securing investment from international VCs. Essien has become an influential voice in Africa’s startup scene, often sharing coding and business insights on social media to inspire upcoming developers.
- LinkedIn: Mark Essien
- Twitter (X): @markessien
- Website/Blog: markessien.com
Abdigani Diriye
Nationality: Somali
Abdigani is a computer scientist who leads fintech investments at Lateral Frontiers VC and formerly led a financial services research group at IBM Research – Africa.
He founded Innovate Ventures, Somalia’s first tech startup accelerator, to incubate local talent. Abdigani’s work earned him recognition as an MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 in 2017 – the first Somali to receive that honor. He holds a PhD in computer science from University College London and has over 40 patents/publications in HCI and fintech. After years of research in Nairobi and the UK, Abdigani now focuses on fostering tech ecosystems in the Horn of Africa. He remains active in mentoring Somali entrepreneurs and building bridges for African startups to access global capital.
- LinkedIn: Abdigani Diriye
- Twitter (X): @AbdiganiDiriye
Ada Nduka Oyom
Nationality: Nigerian
Ada is a software developer and an influential tech community builder.
She is the founder of She Code Africa, a nonprofit that has empowered over 20,000 African women with coding skills, and co-founder of Open Source Community Africa (OSCA). With a background in software engineering, Ada has contributed code at companies like Koniku and Interswitch, but her hallmark is community leadership – organizing dozens of events and mentorship programs to foster inclusion in tech. She’s been recognized with awards (e.g. ELOY Award for Tech 2024) for lowering barriers for women in STEM. Ada continues to code, mentor, and advocate for open-source contribution across Africa.
- Twitter (X): @Kolokodess
- LinkedIn: Ada Nduka Oyom
- Website/Blog: Ada Nduka Oyom
Shakir Mohamed
AI and Education is one way to simultaneously have research, product, and social impact. I like working in these, what I call, triple-impact domains.
Nationality: South African
Shakir is a research scientist in artificial intelligence and one of DeepMind’s leading researchers in the UK.
He has worked on advancing machine learning in areas like healthcare and model ethics. Importantly, Shakir co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba, the annual African ML summer school that has trained and connected thousands of African AI researchers since 2017. Through Indaba, he’s helped nurture a pan-African AI community and expand access to world-class ML education. Shakir’s research contributions (he’s a Google Scholar with 10k+ citations) and his leadership in Indaba earned him the 2023 Royal Society Africa Prize. He remains a mentor for African AI scholars and advocates for “AI for Good” globally.
- LinkedIn: Shakir Mohamed
- Twitter (X): @shakir_za
- Website: shakirm.com
- Blog: blog.shakirm.com
Wrap Up
These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals in Africa available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.
Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. If you intend to share or make use of it in any way, we kindly ask that you include a backlink to the original source – EchoGlobal.
Tags: Africa, coders, developers, engineers, hiring
Lou Reverchuk IT Entrepreneur