The Tech Gold Rush

Background

The foundations were laid respectably. Andela, co-founded in Lagos in 2014 by a team including Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, sold the thesis that brilliance is evenly distributed even if opportunity is not, and paid young Nigerians to become world-class developers. The startup scene it seeded grew quietly through the late 2010s. Then, in October 2020, Stripe acquired Paystack for a reported two hundred million dollars plus, and the quiet ended. The acquisition was the starting gun the whole country heard: tech was no longer an abroad thing. Two years later Flutterwave's valuation made unicorn a household word, and the syllogism completed itself on every timeline: they learned tech, they earn in dollars, therefore.

The boom

The learn-tech wave of 2020 to 2023 was enormous and, in fairness, substantially real. ALX and AltSchool Africa enrolled at national scale. Utiva, HNG internships under Mark Essien, SheCodeAfrica and a hundred smaller outfits trained genuine cohorts into genuine jobs. Remote work globalised salaries, and a mid-level developer in Surulere earning three thousand dollars a month restructured the ambitions of every family gathering he attended. The tech bro emerged as a recognisable figure: MacBook, mechanical keyboard, standing desk in a bedroom in Yaba, salary denominated in a currency his landlord could not pronounce.

The saturation

Then the machinery engaged. Every hall that once taught forex began teaching data analytics. UI/UX design, the softest visible entry point, absorbed a generation of enrollees sold six weeks to six figures. Product management became the destination for everyone who preferred meetings to semicolons. Course sellers, many of whom had never shipped anything but courses, packaged tech the way their predecessors packaged mini-importation, and the entry-level market flooded precisely as the global tide went out: the 2022 and 2023 layoff cycles closed the remote taps, and the junior pipeline jammed with certificate holders auditioning for roles that had stopped existing. The word portfolio began to mean a Figma redesign of a banking app that no bank had requested, of which the ecosystem now holds approximately four hundred thousand.

The culture

The timeline did what it does. Tech bros flexed payslips; the timeline built a personality cult, then a backlash, then a genre of jokes about tech sis and product managers who cannot define their product. The 100 days of code hashtag bloomed and wilted seasonally, like harmattan. And underneath the banter sat the true engine, the same one under half the entries on this site: tech was the visa. Learn tech, get remote job or relocation offer, japa. The bootcamps sold tickets; the destination was japa all along.

Where it stands

Serious people still get trained and hired, the ecosystem still produces real companies, and the early cohort's careers were genuinely transformed, which is more than the forex academies ever delivered. What was ruined was the entry ramp: the junior market is a stadium crush, the certificate has deflated, and the six-weeks-to-six-figures promise has moved on to teaching AI automation, carrying its countdown timer to the next gold rush. The talent was always real. The queue, as ever, is the problem.