Introducing ASValley – Building Proof of Skill for African Tech Talent

Hi everyone, I'm Azibapu Milton

Based in Lagos, Nigeria

What I’m working on: I’m the founder of ASValley (African Silicon Valley), a platform that gives African developers verifiable, real-world engineering experience instead of another certificate.

Here’s how it works: we publish structured technical tasks along with the actual starting codebase. Developers claim a task, build it locally, and submit it for review. The unusual part is that several people can claim the same task at once; nothing gets locked, everyone can see who’s working on what and for how long, and the strongest submission wins. Points, levels, reliability scores, and a public leaderboard all come out of work that a real reviewer actually judged. Our first project, Project Dynamo, is live on the platform now.

The problem I’m solving: there’s no shortage of talented African developers. What’s missing is credible proof portfolios are self-reported, and certificates don’t tell an employer whether you can ship under pressure and review.

Goals for the next 12 months:

• Get a serious cohort of contributors actively shipping on the platform

• Build the demand-side companies who’ll treat an ASValley track record as a real hiring signal

• Recruit a bench of senior engineers to write tasks and review submissions

• [Reach sustainable revenue / raise a pre-seed round, pick whichever is true, or delete this line]

Challenges I’m facing right now:

1. Classic chicken-and-egg. Contributors want tasks worth doing; companies want proven contributors. I’m bootstrapping both sides at once and would genuinely value advice from anyone who’s done it.

2. Reviewer capacity. Review quality is what makes the track record mean anything, and it’s my hardest thing to scale.

3. Monetization. I know who gets value from this. I’m still working out who should pay and when. Open to being told I’m wrong.