How to Hire Developers in Africa Without Getting Burned
We have hired, fired, and worked with dozens of developers across Africa. The good ones are not always the ones with the best CVs.
Hiring developers in Africa is different from hiring in San Francisco or London. The talent is there. The processes are not always. We have hired, fired, and partnered with developers across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Here is what we have learned.
Do not overvalue certificates
A CS degree from a top African university is useful. It is not a guarantee. We have worked with self-taught developers who ship better code than PhD holders. The difference is usually not intelligence. It is curiosity and grit.
Ask candidates to show something they built. A GitHub profile. A live app. A blog post explaining a technical problem they solved. If they cannot show anything, that is a signal. Not always a bad one — junior developers may not have shipped yet. But for senior roles, shipping history matters more than credentials.
Test for problem-solving, not syntax
We stopped doing whiteboard interviews years ago. They do not predict job performance. Instead, we give candidates a small take-home project. Something that takes 2-4 hours. A simple API with auth, CRUD, and a few edge cases.
What we look for: did they read the requirements carefully? Did they handle errors? Is the code organized? Did they write tests? Did they document how to run it? The candidate who writes a perfect solution with no tests is less interesting than the one who writes a good solution with tests and a README.
Remote work requires different skills
A developer who is brilliant in an office may struggle remotely. Remote work needs self-direction, clear written communication, and the ability to ask for help without hand-holding.
In interviews, we ask: "Tell me about a time you got stuck and how you resolved it." The answer tells us a lot. If they say "I figured it out alone," that is a yellow flag. Good developers know when to ask. Great developers know how to ask clearly.
Pay fairly, not cheaply
African developers are not cheap labor. Senior engineers in Nairobi, Lagos, and Cape Town earn competitive salaries. Underpaying gets you turnover. Turnover kills product velocity. We have seen startups lose months of progress because a key developer left for a 30 percent raise elsewhere.
Pay market rate. Offer growth. Let developers own parts of the product. The best retention tool is not salary. It is impact. Developers stay where they can see the result of their work.
Where to find them
LinkedIn works but is noisy. Twitter (X) tech communities in Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra are active. GitHub is better than any job board. Look at contributors to open-source projects in your stack. Reach out directly. The best developers are rarely actively job hunting.
And if you need a team but do not want to hire yet, Novacraft can place senior engineers directly into your project when you need someone who can jump in and move the needle immediately. We also ship full products in two-week sprints without you needing to build an internal team first.