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Andela has sacked 135 staff in Nigeria and three other African countries as the market demand for its service shrinks due to the coronavirus pandemic. The laid-off staff in Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Uganda represents about 10% of its workforce majorly at the senior level.
The latest layoffs followed a similar one in September 2019 when the software talent company sacked more than 400 junior engineers in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. But the engineering department was untouched by the recent staff cut. Also, not likely to be affected are its staff in Rwanda and Ghana.
All staff at Andela are expected to take a salary cut from 10 percent to 30 percent beginning from this May as the company battles to stay afloat.
CEO Jeremy Johnson in a video conference told more than the 1,300 staff in all its locations including Egypt and the United States that while the company’s customer base has collectively done fairly well, majority of them have been massively affected by the coronavirus pandemic hence the startup is projecting a decline in customers.
He would further reveelaed in an email to all staff that: “While our customer base has held up better than most, the majority have still been impacted by the economic downturn.
“And while I’ve been blown away by messages from engineering leaders explaining how much they value the Andelans on their team, we’re still going to see churn spike this year as well as a decline in new customers due to the economic uncertainty.
“Now that we know that growth is going to be much slower than anticipated, we need to cut costs to ensure that we make it to the other side.”
