Africa-focused education platform, AltSchool, has successfully raised $1 million in its pre-seed fundraising round.

AltSchool, a startup based in Nigeria, that is focused on training people to become junior to mid-level engineers, has said that it will use the funds to scale its work in Africa.

The company, which was co-founded by Adewale Yusuf, Akintunde Sultan and Opeyemi Awoyemi, has positioned itself to solve Africa’s talent problem and become an entry point for young Nigerians going into tech.

The company is doing this by creating an online school with a curriculum to arm non-technical people with viable technical and soft skills. The company also partners with higher institutions of learning to provide diploma certificates to its students.

The pre-seed fundraising round had participations from investors like Voltron Capital, Nestcoin, Pledges, and Odba VC.

Speaking on AltSchool’s operation, CEO, Adewale Yusuf, noted that:

“We need to find a shortcut for people, whereby they will be able to make money and provide for their family and add value to the economy. That’s one of the reasons we launched AltSchool because if a lot of people can have marketable skills, then I think we can solve a massive problem in the market.”

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He also added that AltSchool is working towards providing avenues for participants; especially for those who are unable to secure admission into its program, to complete the entire nine-month program.

“We realize that the most important thing is skills. We genuinely want to give people the skills. And we know that not everybody that passed the assessment will make it to the end of school, nor are they better than those who failed. We’ll create a situation where if some can stick to the end of this semester, we’ll find a way for them to complete the programme,” the CEO added.

In 2020, Adewale Yusuf came up with the idea of training software engineers, and ready them for global opportunities. He met with academics at Obafemi Awolowo University, but the idea was unable to fly.

Yusuf later realized that an online class would be better for his idea, and this birthed AltSchool in 2021.

AltSchool has about 8,000 people from 19 countries applying for its software engineering program.

AltSchool has positioned itself to fill the gap left by Andela, after the latter changed its business model to a pure marketplace focusing on senior developers.