DID ANDELA BREAK ANY LAW? (DISENGAGEMENT OF JUNIOR ENGINEERS IN NIGERIA)

By Sam Eleanya

Andela, an African startup that within five years of its emergence became synonymous with talent development in software engineering across select African countries in West and East Africa, has announced that 250 junior engineers and staff from its Nigerian and Ugandan operations will be leaving the organisation. An additional 170 engineers in Kenya will also be affected. .

In a statement released on Tuesday, Andela claimed that its decision was informed by a need to restructure its talent pool to “more closely align with global market demand”.

Andela says it can no longer place all its junior engineers with clients given the saturation of talent in the US, its primary market, largely thanks to an upswell of training programs since it first launched in 2014. Some trained Andela developers have not been placed at all for the past year.

To ameliorate the harsh effect of the lay-offs, the company announced that it “ is now working with all impacted and potentially impacted employees and is committed to providing a holistic professional and financial support package,” it said.

Specifically, it noted that the Andela “is partnering with CcHUB (Nigeria), iHub (Kenya), and Innovation Village (Uganda) to help connect impacted developers with opportunities in their local ecosystems.

“Together, they have identified over 60 companies who are looking to hire top quality junior engineering talent. These hubs will also offer impacted engineers the opportunity to use their co-working spaces free of charge for the next three months.”

According to Omowale David-Ashiru, Andela Nigeria country director, said: “We’re proud of what we have achieved at Andela in five short years; we know the impact we have made both in Nigeria and globally.

“However, we have reached an inflection point that has required a change in strategy, which is why we are announcing these changes to our talent strategy.

“Our immediate focus is on providing practical support to those employees who are impacted by the restructuring, and we will provide them with the resources they need to succeed in their next steps.”

In his remarks, Jeremy Johnson, Andela’s co-founder and CEO, emphasized that the company needed to trim its junior engineer corps to focus on growing its senior talent base faster because there is a higher demand for experienced talent.

“This shift in demand also means that we now have more junior talent than we are able to place. This is a challenge for the business, and for these junior engineers who want, and deserve, authentic work experiences that we are not able to provide,” he said.

“Five years ago, we launched Andela to solve a global challenge: Brilliance is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. To succeed in our long-term mission, we have to make tough decisions to continue growing a company that we know will change the way the world thinks about talent.”

The company said it has plans to hire 700 experienced engineers by the end of 2020.

Under Nigerian law, Andela would have the right to disengage its staff provided it acted in accordance with the contract signed with each of those staff – where there are applicable collective agreements or statutory impositions, especially in regard to pensions and gratuities, the company would be obligated to satisfy those too or expose itself to legal liabilities. There is also a question of discrimination on the basis of circumstances of birth or sex or ethnic group. Persons working for a company like Andela do not enjoy employment tenure with employment flavours accorded employees of government entities in Nigeria (where contractually precluded).

However, there remain other awkward issue, first that of constitutionality – as to discrimination enshrined under S.42 of the Constitution. For while it may not be immediately apparent if Andela’s sudden shift in operational focus discriminates against any protected category, however, it remains a question of fact if the change will not preponderantly affect female engineers/technologist who until recent history were not significant players in the space Andela worked in and thus may stand to be significantly impacted by the lay-off of junior engineers. There is also the likelihood that Nigerians from some sections of the country that have participated in the technology eco-system until the past one to two decade may find their budding talents affected disproportionately by the Andela move. Those may, arguably go to questions of discrimination on the basis of circumstance of birth, sex and, even if a long stretch, ethnic group.

There is another question of breach based on unmet representation – or misrepresentation. One of Andela’s unique branding quotient was that fo a training programme that turned out tech-professionals for global companies, or specifically, US and European Markets. It is a question of earnings: high-end earning. The employees subject themselves to the rigours of training under Andela for that purpose. So, there is something to be said about breach of ‘contract’ when Andela after taking these young people through years of training only ends up turning them loose on the ‘local’ market which pay scale and perhaps work experience is considerably lower than what promised or expected in Europe or North America. The deal, some may say, was to train and place in North American technology or engineering companies – not train and farm out for employment in Africa as perhaps, over-qualified layoffs that many companies may tag to expensive to re-hire.

“Did Andela use those junior engineers -leveraged them – for its ultimate ends (supplying of senior engineers) only to dump them?” is a fair question a Nigerian Judge would not mind its ventilation. After all, Andela’s selling pitch over its entire half-decade of operation has been essentially that of a company which provided opportunity that might have been out of reach to budding developers across Africa primarily through training. It was a premise upon which Andela raised over $150 million from major name investors including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, 

True, while there may be ‘enough’ demand from employers to absorb these former Andela developers — as many African companies will be happy to hire them knowing their status as Andela alumni – the happiness may not be shared from the Andela ex-employees’ end. There is the little problem that many of them had dreamed of earning ten times (in Europe and North america) what they may be offered now back home. There is also the question of these alumni being considered good fits for the local work spaces as the highly focused baseline technical training they received may require significant adaptations for African operations. The readiness of future companies to provide conditions required for them transition out nicely with soft skills, judgment, and problem solving aptitudes and aspirations homed into Africa may prove problematic as that often happens on a job surrounded by peers and managers with similar backgrounds or experience.” 

It is commendable that Andela has committed to work in collaboration with Lagos-based  Co-Creation Hub and other hubs across its markets to identify companies interested in hiring its outgoing talent. It may not be enough – except a new re-immersion is part of the process to condition these Alumni to refocus on working the African beat – mentally.

Nigerian judges at the National Industrial Court are becoming famous for their flexibility in the straddling of legal questions relating to employment. And a few may be titillated by the prospect of exploring the question if a company is allowed to lay off an employee on a basis framed as Andela seems to have done: for simply being a junior engineer (by virtue of chronology or training or experience) when Andela decided to refocus its market. There may some interesting questions to explore as to whether those are discriminatory or are so outside the foreseeable contemplation of the parties at the time of contracting or constitute misrepresentation fundamental enough that Andela could be in legal jeopardy for breach of contract of employment. Allowing companies to lay off staff simply because market changed and threatened their bottomline is not new; and allowing private or independent businesses to hire or fire for no reason or any reason has been a part of Nigeria’s legal jurisprudence. what is however new is an Industrial Court that is constitutionally empowered and which is silently redefining its role as an arbiter in the employment as to include realms that a few decades back would have been impossible.

How Andela manages all those dynamics, enough as to retain its former employees’ affection, would prove vital towards retaining its industry defining status and goodwill among Nigerians. Otherwise, a court docket, perhaps a few, may be bearing its corporate title as a defendant, in the near future.

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