alGROWithm, a Nigeria-based growth agency is building Africa’s first growth talent accelerator. The Growth Talent Accelerator Programme (GTAP) is a two-phase training programme in partnership with Digital Africa’s Talent 4 Startups Initiative which will help develop world-class growth engineers on the continent.
In the evolution of Africa’s tech ecosystem, a number of important gaps are beginning to get filled. First, there was the investment gap barring the animation of innovative products and services. Now that capital is pouring into Africa’s tech ecosystem, there’s the talent gap that is barring development.
When we hear of talent scarcity in the ecosystem, we mostly hear about software engineers and developers. But the search for able talent touches all departments from software engineering to product management, and growth roles.
While most digital schools and programmes like Andela, Decagon, and AltSchool are focusing on solving the engineering and product talent gaps, growth is largely unattended to.
alGROWithm’s GTAP aims to bridge that gap
Who is alGROWithm
You’ve heard of Business-as-a-Service (Baas), Software-as-a-Service (Saas), even Fintech-as-a-Service (FaaS), but have you heard of Growth-as-a-service (GaaS)?
It’s what alGROWithm offers. Founded by Bili Sule in 2018, the agency uses growth engineering to design and implement sustainable growth models and strategies for African startups and SMEs. alGROWithm’s services span across marketing to growth modelling, digital advertising and even branding.
The agency has served over 50 startups in the ecosystem including Spleet, Chaka, OkHi, and Binance where it led a market entry campaign into Nigeria.
alGROWithm also offers short 6-hour growth courses called Growth Engineering Training (GET) which have been completed by over 300 people. GET, however, only offers its trainees a surface overview of growth engineering tactics.
According to Sule, who is also the agency’s Chief Growth Officer (CGO), “While GET challenges the mindset, we wanted to design something that helps trainees think of growth in a consistent and sustainable way for businesses. And that’s how we came up with GTAP.”
Tapping into GTAP
Last year, Digital Africa—in partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)—launched the Talent 4 Startups Initiative to provide 250 scholarships aimed at supporting digital talent growth across 12 African countries.
Forty of these scholarships will go towards alGROWithm’s Growth Talent Accelerator Programme which will be held in Nigeria and Ghana over the course of the year.
The programme will be divided into 2 cohorts. While the first, via a 6-month course, will focus on upskilling employees of tech startups with growth experience into growth engineers, the second cohort will see freelancers and unemployed youth becoming growth experts over a 4-month period.
“From the results of our research so far, it is clear that the ecosystem needs a steady supply of growth talent to make it easier for founders to find and hire the people they need,” CGO Bili Sule said to TechCabal. “It is also clear that there’s a need for training and upskilling existing talent to levels of expertise where they can deliver in line with employers’ expectations. This is why the Talent 4 Startups opportunity with Digital Africa, was particularly exciting for us. It presented an opportunity for alGROWithm to start closing these gaps.”
