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Nigeria’s AltSchool has raised $1,000,000 in pre-seed funding to scale its efforts in technical and software skills training.
The investment will enable AltSchool to build its content and curriculum, technology infrastructure and community concept, where students will meet offline to network and learn together.
Founded by Adewale Yusuf, Akintunde Sultan and Opeyemi Awoyemi, AltSchool enables thousands of individuals make money via marketable skills rather than banking on degrees all the time.
Leveraging its digital platform, AltSchool provides a curriculum to improve and upskill individuals without technical skills, helping them gain these soft skills while partnering with higher institutions to provide diploma certificates within a short and effective period. All that’s needed to participate in the programme is a high school certificate and computer literacy.
The programme provides new applicants with a home study kit in preparation for an assessment test. Those admitted into the school, meeting a pass mark of 85%, will take a software engineering course with three tracks: frontend engineering, backend engineering and cloud engineering. In the one-year programme, students take classes for nine months – three semesters, followed by a three-month internship at local tech companies to gain experience.
Those who do not get admitted into its programme are not left out. AltSchool gives them access to the platform’s first-semester content for free and practice. If they stick to the end of the three-month curriculum, AltSchool will provide avenues for them to complete the entire nine-month programme.
In AltSchool’s pipeline are courses on product, blockchain and data. It intends to launch the product modules, including product management, marketing and design, by Q2 this year. The company is also exploring B2B partnerships with private schools in Nigeria and Africa, using AltSchool’s curriculum in their classes.
So far, more than 8,000 people have applied (the application fee is ₦10,000, almost ~$20) to participate in AltSchool’s software engineering program, which starts in April. These applications came from 19 countries (including 14 African countries) and Yusuf said the company received the most entries from Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Botswana.
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