The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Just Invested $24 Million In This African Startup Company

Andela is a two-year-old company that offers the people of Africa the opportunity to learn how to develop software. According to the company's own website, it selects the top 1 percent of tech talent from the African continent and then shapes them into "world-class technical leaders" before being paired with companies as full-time team members.

Andela's initiative is bold and caught the attention of Facebook Inc FB's CEO Mark Zuckerberg who invested several millions of dollars in the startup through his Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

According to CNN Money, Andela banked $24 million in a round of financing led by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative and also received financing from GV (formerly Google Ventures).

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"There are five open jobs in the U.S. for every software developer looking for one. It is a challenged ecosystem," CNN Money quoted Jeremy Johnson, Andela's cofounder and CEO as saying. "We're able to tap into what I argue is the largest pool of untapped brain power in the world."

Andela plans on using its latest round of financing to expand its network of developers and launch in a third African country before 2017. The startup already operates in Kenya and Nigeria, where it employs nearly 200 engineers in its offices.

Andela has already partnered with notable technology companies including International Business Machines Corp. IBM, Microsoft Corporation MSFT and Facebook, among others.