Why don't African devs and startups like collabs?

Published By zooboole

Only collabs can save African software devs and their startups.

It's weird to see that many of us still don't understand that we can't make it alone. Our artists seem to be making it better on this subject.

Several times I met and spoke with other developers with regard to a featuring. It has, so far, always been a vain talk. You are ignored at the moment you bring the first statement with regard to that topic. I am probably not that good for them to collaborate with. But why am I not seeing that around? Meetups and conferences seem to be wedding-party-likes. We meet we chat, we laugh, some minority shows off to some majority, and end of story.

Go to the USA, conferences are organized to create connections and collaborations. Check Indians, Pakistanis, Australians, or Russians. Boys mingle to create great stuff, even on common blogs. The key point is simple: let's make money or just succeed, the sharing and titles parts will follow later as in any family.

Here when you call a fellow and let him understand you have an idea you would like to collaborate on, you get feedback like:

Oh! wow! what a coincidence! I was working on something similar
Okay, I heard you. I will get back to you(They don't believe in you and your idea, but they will not tell you the truth. To waste your time)
Ah! I am currently busy with something else(But I promise you they will have time to think of how to put in place your idea on their own).
They will never reply to your messages(here "famous" developers don't talk to small ones -just like Michael Jackson would do lol). Come on!
I don't work with people who are not popular(this actually happens in the head ;) )
Oh! He/she is a Nigerian and I am a Ghanaian, or he's a Kenyan and I am Tanzanian, vis versa.

Remember this sentence from our ancestors Alan Turing and Charles Babbage. Computation has no border nor it has a nationality. The same applies to its career.

I am not criticizing. All this can happen naturally. After all, it's not a crime to be busy, reject an idea, or even not to believe in it, or not like to work with a particular fellow. I am fine with that.

Uff! that was a hot intro. But, on a serious note, tools like GitHub or Gitlab and many more were created for collaborations purpose. If it wasn't important to collaborate those companies wouldn't exist. Recently, Github was acquired by Microsoft at $7.5B. A collaborative tool!

Software development is a very complex, hard and time-consuming field. Building a good product alone is quasi-impossible. We don't have time anymore. The competition is higher than ever.

There are these ideas of applications a few guys can put together and change the face of history. You just need to learn how to work with each other.

If you think you have those special skills, why can't you use them? As a smart developer, I trust your first quality is curiosity. And your nature is research and discovery. As a smart developer, do you believe those things can be accomplished alone? I doubt. It's dangerous to go alone. Remember that.

We have not been educated in a system where we learn the real values of collaboration. Although we use to team up in classrooms, we always have this competitive philosophy.

I should be the "only" best
They should never know how I make it, it's a family secret
I need to succeed alone and control others

Well, all these were valid when we used to belong to kingdoms. Now we are part of a planetary movement. It's huge and needs joint hands. One of the first advantages of collaboration is that the project has full support from all sides. Every participant not only works for himself but also believe others will build along. There are several levels of collaborations you can like:

Project level collaboration: you team up to work on a project
Enterprise level collaboration: you share information and skills as businesses
Swapping collaboration: Exchange services. You do this for me, I do that for you

It's not ideas and ideals we lack in Africa, but the time to execute them.

It's hard for young Africans to have the trust of an investor who can support their projects. There are few reasons for that:

We lack the right skill-set
We lack practical entrepreneurial training
We lack good communication skills
And we are most hungry.

The first three issues can be managed. But the last is usually the source of fear. Investors might not trust you because they think you can't handle funds. But, if you can prove yourself in the first three points, you will possibly pass the last one.

I understand that it's hard for us to support the execution of a project. But, I still believe there are a few options we could try:

Planning and
Sacrifice

Why these two? Well, if we assume we are developers or tech startups, it means we have a little knowledge of coding. We usually create projects for our clients. But, when we stop taking jobs from the clients to focus on ours, we wouldn't get funds again to support ourselves.

So, the planning I am talking about here is that, when we decide to collaborate on a project, the project must be well defined and detailed to help see how much work we needed. How long it will take, and which skills are required. Once that is set, the next thing is to build and buy the required skills and any other need. It's possible that in the team we get all those needs by combining what everyone knows.

Then everyone can decide to make a sacrifice of himself by working hard and fast on the part he/she can handle. The timeline is defined and the task is clear. You can work hard in a very short period of time in collaboration with others' work to build something cool.

Will we give it a try? give me your answers below in the comments section.

Cover image credit to Rawpixel