Being a Developer in Africa

in #developers7 years ago

I'm a 19 year old self taught developer. Currently doing a computer science degree course . I have been in the developer word for like 2-3 years approximately . I gained interest in coding back when I was in highschool. I didn't start right away until I was through with high school . Main reason being I was in a boarding school and access to computers was impossible to come by . The school also didn't allow you to carry one to school not that I had one . I first got hand of a laptop when my brother moved to the United States and left me his. I didn't know where to begin in my programming journey but I had heard of bash so I taught myself bash for the first three weeks . I didn't write anything important with it but I was able to understand the concepts in it . I was way too over my head and thought I could build an app in bash for the lack of knowledge I'd say . This whole time I was running on curiosity and the eargeness to understand . After toppling over a couple of languages I decided to stick with python and I have been programming in Python mainly ever since . I heard about freelancing and through a small research I discovered being a freelance developer pays well extremely well . Joined upwork and freelancer and started bidding and sending proposals for about a year and still got nothing . I told myself maybe using these platforms wasn't a good idea . After talking to a couple of people about this I realized it wasn't just me but most of the people applying for freelance work on these platforms wasn't getting anything. Since I was broke and needed the money I decided to do it locally . Printed out some business cards went trecking from one company to another hoping I would convince them that they needed a website and would let me make one for them . I tried for over 3months nothing still . Maybe it's because of where I'm located that i got nothing since the economy in Kenya isn't really thriving and the number of successfull businesses that could be a source of work aren't available . I'm still broke as hell and trying to figure out something that will get me some income. Thank you for reading this . Comment your experience on freelancing or as a developer that you think might be of great help to me and many others like me out there . God bless !