What started out as a small coding school around a kitchen table with six chairs in Accra grew into a nationwide educational program for coding and IT that has taught over 700 students since 2018, with 89% managing to get jobs within 6-9 months of graduating.
We first met Richard Brandt, founder of Codetrain Africa, at our International Mentoring Program in 2018 in West Africa. He started out with us as a fellow, and now he is an ambassador, alumni leader and inspiration. Richard is one of the entrepreneurs that we have been working with since he started out, and he took part in programs throughout his journey that catered to the needs of the phases that he was in.
Richard shares his story with enpact, successes, challenges and learnings from when he first started and where he is now.
The beginnings of Codetrain
The idea for Codetrain first came after I started training college student interns who did not have practical skills in coding so that they would get global opportunites while they are in Ghana. However, they kept asking me if they could bring their friends, and that is where the idea of Codetrain Africa was born – a coding school that offers world class training experience right here in Ghana, so that African youth can take key spaces in tech. I was selected for the MEST Africa, a program that seeks to nurture Africa’s globally successful tech entrepreneurs and later, I got an opportunity to participate in the Startup Chile Accelerator program in Santiago de Chile. While in the program, I realiszed that that most of my colleagues needed to hire web and mobile developers, and designers; they had a hard time finding programming and coding talent. On the other hand, there were thousands of young smart people back home in Ghana, that could be qualified for these opportunities with the right training I knew that there were thousands of young people in Accra, and throughout Ghana, that could be qualified for these opportunities. That’s when I started realizing, that, yeah, there’s an opportunity there.
While in Chile, I gave talks to in universities such as Universidad de Mayor to inspire young people to pursue careers in the digital space and ot aspire to become entrepreneurs. And when I returned to Ghana, I continued, inspiring young people to upskill and get global opportunities, and I saw that this idea resonated with young people because today’s African youth wants to activitly participate in the global digital space. They want to do the work to upskill and get a global opportunity, they’re committed and they learn fast.
It was a small school, but the goal and the vision were big.
The trajectory of growth
When I joined the International Mentoring Program, I had just started working with young people, and had experiences with other programs. The focus of all my training thus far was just about fast growth; sales, pitching, getting investors, etc. But, what I found unique about the mentoring program was that we had the chance to sit down with my mentor and actually look at the basics of our operations and business model. The sessions allowed us to look into the purpose, the value and the intended impact behind the program.
“Instead of mindlessly speeding up, the program encouraged us to slow down and build a better, sustainable business right from the beginning.”
The focus was on setting the right foundation. By the time the program was done, we had built a one year solid coding bootcamp, and improved our offerings. We found a space three times the size that it was, and created a new branch in another city. We also started getting students from across West Africa. – Nigeria, Liberia, Guinea, Gambia, Congo, Mali, etc. and up till date, every cohort has students from neighboring countries because of the Codetrain vision. We were on the right track. During the sessions in Berlin and Accra, we developed our branding and pitching sessions, to help us prepare better.
One of the most iconic moments in our journey was our design thinking session with Daniela Lopez, Design thinker and Venture architect. It was a pivoting moment in our growth. We are still in touch to this day.
Adapting to the pandemic
Things were improving really fast, and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Schools were among the most affected by the lockdowns. We closed, there was no revenue coming in, and we had no income. We couldn’t really afford to put everything on pause. At first, we started recording short tutorials at home and sending them to our students via WhatsApp. We couldn’t give up our office space, so we were in debt due to the office rentals, and it was very draining. Taking part in the Empowering Entrepreneurship Initiative helped us to stay afloat, especially when it came to keeping our staff and paying our debts.
By December 2021, we got a grant – the I&P Education to employment program – to secure our physical campus, retain staff, make key hires, get a standby generator, and we included safeguarding, diversity and inclusion and digitization of our courses during the program.
“If it wasn’t for the program, we couldn’t have aimed big. We would’ve been still trying to recover and survive.”
We are an impact-driven business. We are committed to safeguarding through promoting diversity and inclusion, creating more jobs and increasing African representation in the global tech scene. We were also able to utilize what we learned to overhaul our training program and tailor it further to the needs of students in Ghana and across other African countries, and to rebrand and move up in the markets with the assistance of 3 international consultants from the SAP Sabbatical Program. We’re proud to say that 91% of our students stated that their quality of life improved due to the knowledge gained through our training programs This growth trajectory all started after the enpact programs set us up for success.
Becoming part of a conscious network
AfricaBerlin Network was really eye-opening for us. It actually inspired our new vision, which is to be the leading software brand worldwide, creating a significant impact in communities. Being part of this international community opened our eyes to the demand for talents, both in Europe and in other countries across Africa, which set the stage for peer-to-peer regional partnerships. We were connected to Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, which opened the doors to different companies across the city. We are in collaboration with Startup Lounge to connect Codetrain Alumni with African startups building tech products.
AfricaBerlin was a network development project implemented by enpact in 2023-2024 that brought entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders across Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Germany together to exchange knowledge, connect and build partnerships.
The power of community
“It’s normal to feel terrible as an entrepreneur sometimes, but having a real community around you is what can keep you going long enough to be successful.”
The power of community is very underrated, but has been the most valuable for me. Having access to a diverse network of mentors and experts at an early-stage is priceless. You get free advice, someone who can highlight the problems you can’t see from your perspective. You also see that you’re not alone, when you can connect to others in different sectors and different countries that are going through the same thing as you.
It has been extraordinary. It has also been great for my mental health and motivation. There are so many brilliant people out there with a lot of great ideas that they really want to see through, but being an entrepreneur can be very draining, and too many people give up because they run out of energy. It’s normal to feel terrible, but having a real community around you is what can keep you going long enough to be successful.
The enpact community fosters peer monitoring and horizontal exchange. You can just reach out on the different groups, and people will jump in and help whenever. It’s casual, informal and flexible, which really helps. It also enables lifelong friendships and meaningful connections. Harald Katzenschläger and Hermann Gams, founders of Dream Academia, were my mentors in my first enpact program in 2018, now they are on my advisory board.
What’s next? We are aiming big. At this point, we are training AI product engineers in partnership with GIZ and we are looking for partners and companies that are looking to build prototypes in AI or building an internal tool or maybe building an MVP to experiment with a few ideas. So, if you know any companies that are looking to build products and are looking for engineering capacity to deliver projects in software or AI, let us know.
