Ask HN: Have you had any success with African developers?

In a mainly white male dominated industry, it may be okay if recruiters do not look at Africa for their next hire. There's not a lot of good programmers here. I still want to know:

1. Are you open to applicants from Africa? 2. Have you hired an African developer or do you work with one? 3. Do Africans apply for jobs at your place?

I am a young Ghanaian programmer who is looking for a job (preferably in the US). I don't have any material job experience yet.

I've had colleagues from Nigeria, CER, S.A., and several other countries in Africa.

I don't think you'll find any resistance beyond the intrinsic difficulty of an H1B hire, and that might be complicated by the absence of a bureaucracy in your country that is as mature as some of those in Europe/Asia (Czech Republic, Ukraine, India, China). If you don't have material job experience yet, it's really unlikely that someone will put the expense into that hiring process to bring you on. My (non-expert) advice would be to try to go to school in the US and work under that visa or to build the relevant work experience at home, possibly contract work for US companies. Best of luck.

I've worked with African developers and an currently working with a couple. The ones that I know started out with an agency and then eventually gained green card status and were able to get hired independently of the agency. The potential problem with going the agency route, as I informally understand it, is that no matter how disatisfied you may be become with your agency, you are stuck with them until you are able to apply for a green card - and that could be a pretty long time.

the newme accelerator is not for africans. it's for black people in america, which is different. the latter group is of african descent but live in america. if Yawboakye went to the newme companies to look for a job he would still face the same issues that he would have faced with any other american companies. my advice is to do elance/odesk until you can get what you want.

Heeeey, isn't this a racism? :)

Make a list of 50 companies in your area of interest and just prove that you're better then 90-95% of their developers.

Thats how you get the job. Period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRHkAccUyqM