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Coding School Holberton today announced an agreement to be acquired by African Leadership Group (ALG). The seven-year-old company, which has physical schools around the world in addition to its core online platform, will be split into two. Holberton’s technology platform will become part of ALG’s existing ALX online learning platform and the existing 34 physical locations will become stand-alone businesses under current Holberton COO Florian Bucher.
Julian Barbier, founder of Holberton, told me that the pandemic is clearly putting a lot of pressure on the company, given its previous focus on physical education. When those locations closed, Holberton quickly moved its curriculum online and last year, Holberton began offering its white-labeled online learning platform to focus mostly on SaaS. Barbier, whose co-founder Sylvain Calache left the company during the pandemic, said last year he had been approached by several potential buyers, but he didn’t think they were a good fit and had a lot of money in the bank. , there was no pressure to sell. But ALG seemed like the right fit and when either party announced the purchase price, Barbier, who will join ALG along with most of Holburton’s technology team, said: “I’m happy with the numbers.”
ALG started out as a Holberton client, Barbier explained. “There are many similarities between the two companies and the missions we pursue,” he said. “What was said about a purchase came naturally at one point. When you hit those big numbers with a partner, do you start to wonder if there’s potential for integration? Would it make sense to combine the two companies? And it made a lot of sense and that’s how we started talking about it – first as a joke and then very seriously.
And big numbers are what ALG’s ALX is all about. ALG founder and CEO Fred Swanicker started the organization as a leadership academy (now the African Leadership Academy) for a small group of students. He then added the African Leadership University to reach a wider student body but still focus on leadership and entrepreneurship. At ALX, the team now plans on teaching tech skills to not just thousands, but millions of tech workers.
Image Credits: African Leadership Team
“Four years ago, we realized that the world is undergoing a digital transformation and that skills such as software engineering, data science, cloud computing, cybersecurity are needed – and so we created ALX,” explained Swaniker. “It’s not high school. It’s not a university – but it’s for people who already have college degrees and then we’re going to use them again for these professions in the fourth industrial revolution.
He said the need here is to train about 200,000 students a year. Currently, ALX is working with just under 150,000 students – up from just 2,000 last October. “It’s because young people in Africa have realized that their future lies in technology,” he said when I asked how he explained this rapid growth. “The world has a huge tech skills shortage and the traditional sources of talent like China, India and the US are all aging, so we see a huge opportunity to address this global tech skills shortage by training millions of software engineers. In Africa – and then make it available to the world.”
Image Credits: African Leadership Team
This is where ALG’s business plan comes in. Swanicker says the traditional coding school model of training students for free and getting a share of the revenue after they graduate will be a challenge. So instead, ALG is taking a two-pronged approach. First, The Room, ALG’s talent agency, and B2B businesses exist to help businesses find tech talent (and ALX leverages Holburton’s existing curriculum). But perhaps more importantly, Swaniker hopes to build a technology services business that provides technology solutions and staffing to other businesses. Together, these two businesses generate enough revenue to support the educational side of ALG/ALX.
As Swanicker noted, ALX’s challenge now is to build its B2B brand and execute on its vision. “We are not limited by capital, we have the technology and it is now in execution,” he said. “Can we effectively build our brand with corporate clients? Can we reach them? Can we deliver the talent they need? Can we provide the solutions they need and grow in quality as we scale?” He noted that there are some risks in the current geopolitical climate, which could push companies to become more independent as governments begin to do the same.
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