Talent Nation

Talent Nation is an AI engineering talent company founded by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Kesiah Valkin. Through its Learn2Earn academy it recruits, trains, certifies and deploys engineers, mainly from Africa, into organisations that want to build and manage their own AI capabilities. Applicants take an online assessment and in-person trials; candidates who meet the standard can be deployed directly or enter three-, six- or 12-month training programmes that combine peer-led learning, engineering projects, buildathons, internships and work experience. Trainees do not pay tuition; the company plans to fund new cohorts from revenue earned when its engineers are placed with enterprise clients. The company says it has received more than 63,000 applications in 18 months, assessed more than 32,000 candidates and enrolled about 1,400 fellows across nine campuses in six cities, and it aims to train one million AI engineers from Africa over the next decade.