The Kiwi Who Moved to Madagascar to Build a Tech School

Sam Lucas left a comfortable engineering career in New Zealand to train underprivileged youth in one of the world's poorest countries as world-class software developers.

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on earth. It is also full of brilliant, motivated young people who have no pathway into the global economy.

Sam Lucas was a young engineer at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare in New Zealand when he became convinced that this gap — between talent and opportunity — was one of the most solvable problems in international development. Not through charity. Through business.

He quit his job, moved to Madagascar, and founded Onja.

The Model

Onja is a social enterprise that identifies the brightest students in Madagascar who cannot afford higher education, trains them as world-class software developers over two years, and then places them in remote engineering roles with international companies.

The model is self-funding. Companies pay Onja for the developers' time. That revenue covers the cost of training the next cohort of students. The enterprise does not depend on donations to operate.

The Selection Process

The most important part of Onja's model is the selection process.

They do not select students based on prior academic achievement — which would simply replicate existing inequalities. They select based on raw cognitive ability and motivation, using a rigorous assessment process that identifies students who have the potential to become excellent developers, regardless of their educational background.

Many of Onja's students come from rural areas. Many have never used a computer before they arrive. Within two years, they are writing production code for European and American companies.

"Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. Our job is to close that gap."

The Business Model

The salary sharing element is worth examining. Onja graduates agree to contribute a portion of their salaries to fund the training of the next generation of students. This is not charity — it is a community investment in a model that gave them their opportunity.

The Scale Question

Onja's model works. The graduates are employed. The companies are satisfied. The communities are transformed. The question is whether it can scale.

The constraint is not demand — there are more companies that want to hire Onja graduates than there are graduates. The constraint is supply: identifying, selecting, and training students in a country with limited infrastructure is slow, expensive, and operationally complex.

Lucas has been clear that scaling Onja is not about replicating the model in more countries quickly. It is about proving the model deeply in Madagascar first — building the systems, the curriculum, the employer relationships, and the community infrastructure that can eventually support expansion.

The Expert Commentary

Onja is one of the clearest examples of what I call the Dignity Model of impact business. The model does not give people things. It gives people capability — and then connects that capability to the global economy.

This distinction matters. Charity creates dependency. Capability creates agency. The most sustainable impact businesses are the ones that give people the tools to participate in the economy on their own terms, not the ones that provide ongoing support.

For impact founders who are building in developing markets, Onja is a reminder that the most powerful thing you can do is not to solve people's problems for them. It is to build the infrastructure that allows them to solve their own problems.

What I Would Do If I Were Sam

Onja's biggest opportunity is the employer relationship. Right now, companies hire Onja graduates because the graduates are good. But the companies could be doing much more — sponsoring cohorts, providing mentorship, contributing to curriculum development.

A formal employer partnership programme — with tiered levels of commitment and corresponding levels of access to the graduate pipeline — would generate more predictable revenue, deeper relationships, and a stronger story for both sides.