Nigeria-based company Andela, which builds distributed engineering teams with Africa's top software developers, has cemented its place as one of the continent's most capitalised ventures by taking its total raised funding to US$180 million with a US$100 million Series D round.

Launched in Nigeria but now also active in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, Andela helps to solve the global technical talent shortage by building distributed engineering teams with Africa's top software developers.

In the last four years, the company has hired 1,000 developers out of more than 100,000 applicants,and secured investment from various headline investors, most notably the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Its latest raise - a US$100 million Series D round - also comes with a celebrity factor, as it is led by Generation Investment Management, the VC firm of which former United States vice president Al Gore is chairman. It also features participation from existing investors including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GV, Spark Capital, and CRE Venture Capital.

The Series D funding will see Andela accelerate the development of its technology platform to identify, develop and match talent at scale. By doing so, the company will provide its customers with the necessary data to understand developer performance and better manage distributed teams. Andela will also use the funds to further expand its presence across Africa.

"It's increasingly clear that the future of work will be distributed, in part due to the severe shortage of engineering talent," says Jeremy Johnson, co-founder and chief executive officer of Andela.

"Given our access to incredible talent across Africa, as well as what we've learned from scaling hundreds of engineering teams around the world, Andela is able to provide the talent and the technology to power high-performing teams and help companies adopt the distributed model faster."

Seni Sulyman, vice president of global operations at Andela, said the company had already played a major role in catalysing the growth of technology ecosystems across Africa over the past four years. However, the journey has only just begun, he said.

"To date, we have developed more than one thousand of Africa's current and future technology leaders. This round of funding will help Andela accelerate our mission to advance human potential by powering today's teams and investing in tomorrow's leaders," he said.

Lilly Wollman, co-head of growth equity at Generation Investment Management, said her firm's investment in Andela resulted from its deep research into the future of work.

"We believe Andela is a transformational model to develop software engineers and deploy them at scale into the future enterprise," she said.

"The global demand for software engineers far exceeds supply, and that gap is projected to widen. Andela's leading technology enables firms to effectively build and manage distributed engineering teams. We are great admirers of the outstanding team, mission and culture Andela has built across two continents and five countries."