Talent Nation Secures Pre-Seed Funding Led by Enza Capital and LocalGlobe to Scale AI Talent Platform

LAGOS & LONDON — Talent Nation, a global talent platform designed to train, certify, and deploy artificial intelligence engineers from Africa into international enterprises, has completed a pre-seed financing round following 18 months of stealth operations.

The round was co-led by Africa-focused venture capital firm Enza Capital and London-headquartered fund LocalGlobe. The syndicate featured participation from Future Africa, Kaleo Ventures, Ajim Capital, Solving the World's Greatest Problems, and Accelerate Africa. Key individual backers include Sir John Lazar (President of the Royal Academy of Engineering) and Saul Klein (Co-founder and Managing Partner at LocalGlobe).

Co-founded by serial tech entrepreneur Iyinoluwa Aboyeji (co-founder of unicorns Flutterwave and Andela, and early investor in Moove) alongside Chief Executive Officer Kesiah Valkin, Talent Nation addresses the global structural deficit in specialized AI engineering talent.

Operational Footprint & Academy Metrics

Talent Nation operates its training infrastructure through its dedicated academy arm, Learn2Earn NG:

• 10-Year Mandate: Targets training, certifying, and placing 1.0 million AI engineers over the next decade into global enterprise tech stacks.JPG
• Application Selectivity: The Learn2Earn NG academy has received over 63,000 applications to date and assessed more than 32,000 candidates.
• Active Fellow Pipeline: Currently trains approximately 1,400 active fellows across 9 physical campuses in Nigeria.
• Model Economics: Operates on a tuition-free model for developers, monetizing by connecting certified, job-ready AI talent directly to multinational firms.

Macro Context & Talent Deficit

While venture funding in the global AI sector remains heavily concentrated in frontier model labs and compute infrastructure, human engineering capital remains a primary bottleneck:

• Global Workforce Supply: According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG) data, Africa currently houses approximately 62,000 AI specialists, representing 5% of the global AI workforce.
• Regional Compute Expansion: The platform's roll-out coincides with expanding digital infrastructure across Africa, including Cassava Technologies' launch of South Africa's first specialized AI factory in Cape Town, as well as formal national AI strategies in Nigeria and Kenya.

Executive Statements

"We want to change the economics of who gets to build with AI. The benefits of this technology should not be confined to frontier labs and corporations that can afford the world's most expensive engineering talent. They should be within reach of far more organisations, wherever they operate, and talented people should have a pathway into this industry regardless of where they happen to have been born," stated Kesiah Valkin, Co-Founder & CEO of Talent Nation.

"We’ve got a goal of a million AI engineers over the next 10 years," added Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Co-Founder of Talent Nation. "Developing talent at scale is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. It is easy for us to say that Africa has enormous talent, but what's really hard is building the infrastructure to actually find that talent and develop them to globally competitive standards."

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