The surge in the migration of Nigerian tech talents to Europe and other parts of the world has posed a serious challenge to firms as they are faced with a tech talent shortage.
So many firms in Nigeria are currently hiring freelancers, most especially freelance software developers for contract jobs, in a bid to bridge the tech talent shortage in the country.
Reports disclose that Freelance.com, the world’s largest freelancing, and crowdsourcing marketplace, has seen the number of requests for software developers rise to 54 percent in the third quarter of 2022 when compared to 2021, ranking as the fastest-growing skill compared to others.
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The report also showed that jobs for coding ranked as the second-highest growing skill, moving up 45 percent, while backend development followed closely with 37 percent.
According to reports, the hiring of freelance developers in Nigeria has skyrocketed due to the migration of tech talents out of the country. In a bid to cushion this effect, most companies disclose that they had to resort to hiring contract developers/ freelancers.
However, some disclose that they prefer to employ long-term talents who will always be around at a given point of need, noting that they are left with no option to hire contract tech talents due to the brain drain in the country.
In the banking industry, the mass resignation of skilled tech professionals is already causing a severe strain on digital financial operations such as mobile transfers and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data.
In June this year, customers stormed banks to make complaints about the challenges they are facing with transaction issues. These complaints were centered majorly on network problems.
Experts have disclosed that the high exit of tech talents from these banks is a huge problem, because holding on to them has become a problem due to mobility and options available to developers today.
Employers are finding it hard to get them replaced, and even when they finally get replacements, it won’t be long before that tech talent tenders his resignation letter in a bid to migrate to Europe.
Previously, most firms in Nigeria struggled with allowing tech talents to work remotely, which a large percentage of them are not cool with. However, they are now beginning to loosen up as they now permit these tech talents to work remotely. More so, business training in Nigeria remains key besides the tech.
Currently, Nigeria is competing for the few remaining tech talents against European countries, and it is unfortunate that the country seems to be losing these talents to European countries on countless occasions. The brain drain has no doubt posed a great challenge to organizations and is seriously threatening local tech talent recruitment.
Awesome write-up. Businesses are really struggling to get local tech talents. Businesses are left to use freelance platforms to get skilled professionals. For me, I use terawork.com, which still houses most of the top tech talents in Africa and payment is easy, I use my naira card.