Africa now has the world’s fastest-growing developer community. That is not a projection or an aspiration — it is what the data shows. Between 2019 and 2024, the continent’s base of software developers expanded at 21% a year, outpacing every other region on earth. A new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), titled Develop the Developers: A Strategic Priority for Africa, makes the case that this surge is not accidental. It is the product of deliberate investment: youth demographics, expanding internet access, urban tech hubs, and in some countries, policy choices that have specifically prioritised digital skills.
The numbers are striking in context. Africa currently has 4.7 million developers. That sounds large until you compare it to Asia’s 73.9 million and Europe’s 27.5 million. The continent is, in raw terms, still playing catch-up. But no region is closing the gap faster.
Where the growth is happening
South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria hold the largest absolute developer populations — the legacy of bigger economies with longer-established tech ecosystems. But BCG flags a second tier of markets as the ones worth watching for momentum: Kenya, Tunisia, and Morocco are distinguished by both scale and acceleration. Further down the ladder, Ethiopia and Angola are recording rapid growth from smaller bases, evidence that with the right ecosystem design, even markets that started late can move fast.
For Kenya specifically, this is a validation of what the local tech community has long argued: that Silicon Savannah is more than a marketing term. The country’s investment in digital infrastructure, mobile-first services, and tech education has created a developer pipeline that is now registering on continent-wide analysis by one of the world’s largest consulting firms.
The gender gap: where the headline gets complicated
The growth story is real. The gender story is not so clean.
Women remain significantly underrepresented across Africa’s developer population, and the BCG data puts specific numbers to that gap for the first time. Tunisia is the continental leader: 24% of its developer community is female as of 2024, driven by a decade of targeted education and inclusion efforts. That figure sounds modest — and globally, it is — but in African context it is the highest recorded on the continent.
The contrast with other major tech markets is sharp. Morocco and Egypt, both large and fast-growing developer nations, have female developer representation of less than 14%. These are not small or underdeveloped markets. They have significant investment in technology infrastructure and digital education. The gap reflects choices, not constraints.
Kenya and Rwanda are highlighted in the BCG analysis as examples of smaller economies outperforming larger peers on gender inclusion. The report does not publish specific percentage figures for each country individually, but the framing matters: Kenya is being cited alongside Rwanda as a model, not as a cautionary tale.
That said, independent data adds important context. According to UNESCO and UN Women figures from 2025, women in Kenya occupy fewer than 30% of ICT roles broadly — not just in software development. Only 35% of Kenyan women use mobile internet, compared to 50% of men. The BCG characterisation of Kenya as a positive case is meaningful, but it describes relative performance across a landscape where the absolute numbers remain low.
Why this matters beyond the gender debate
BCG is not making a purely social argument here. The economic case is central to the report’s thesis.
The analysis draws a direct line between the size of a country’s developer community and its scientific research output. In 2020, Morocco and Egypt produced the highest volumes of scientific publications in Africa, tracking closely with their developer concentrations. Countries that build developer communities, the report argues, also build the research capacity and innovation ecosystems that generate long-term economic value. Closing the gender gap is not a diversity exercise — it is a productivity argument. Half the potential talent pool is sitting outside the pipeline.
BCG’s Hamid Maher, who leads the firm’s Tech Hub in Africa and co-authored the report, frames it plainly: this is an economic agenda, not just a digital one. “When countries nurture strong developer communities, they create the conditions for new businesses to emerge, for scientific output to grow, and for innovation to flourish.”
The policy variable
The most important insight in the BCG analysis may be the one that challenges the most common excuse. Gender gaps in tech are often attributed to population size, economic maturity, or cultural inertia. The data undermines all three. Tunisia has a smaller economy than Morocco and a smaller tech ecosystem than Egypt — but it leads both on female developer inclusion. Kenya and Rwanda outperform countries with far larger markets on the same metric.
The differentiator is consistent across cases: deliberate policy. Countries that have aligned education systems, digital policy, and industry support around inclusion are seeing results. Countries that have not are leaving economic potential unrealised.
For Kenya, the question that follows from this report is not whether the ecosystem is growing — it clearly is. The question is whether the policy infrastructure to fully include women in that growth is being built at the same pace as everything else.
