Gebeya has announced that it has acquired CODERS4AFRICA Inc. (C4A) to further accelerate its growth and fuel its developer talent pool into its marketplace.
Headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Gebeya which means “marketplace”, creates a new type of employee market, linking highly trained tech professionals with the companies and startups who seek them. With a presence in Kenya, US and UK, Gebeya is also a center of excellence for African software Engineers, has positioned itself as an organization that produces top talented African software Engineers that understand and are specialists in several sectors.
The acquisition is aimed and driving expansion across new African markets as it provides C4A’s 3,500 plus network of African developers in six countries and access to C4A’s global partners.
“The past few years, we have seen an incredible boost in terms of the growth of Tech hubs, Capital investment and Startups in Africa. However, for a robust and sustainable startup ecosystem, there needs to be three essential components: Entrepreneurs, Capital and Talent.” said Amadou Daffe, CEO of Gebeya.
Mr. Daffe added, “If one of these is missing, imbalance is created and growth is crippled. Gebeya is committed to produce the best tech talent possible to empower startups across Africa. In order to further expand the real-world experience of building and deploying advanced software training program, we have acquired C4A, which has accumulated a lot of knowledge on the IT landscape in Africa and opportunities it presents. C4A and Gebeya bring together a proven track record in designing, deploying and evolving training for software engineers, that lead to success in the real-world market for software and systems development.”
“C4A is a pioneer in training coders across Africa. It has trained thousands of African developers all across the continent before all the existing coding schools in Africa. One of the challenges we faced after growing the largest network of software developers in the continent, was to find a way to give the developers job opportunities.” said Yusuf Bashir CEO of C4A. Mr. Bashir further explained, “Gebeya’s model handles both Ed-tech and employment opportunities for software developers. Thus, since Gebeya and C4A share the same vision to see Africa becoming the next destination hub for tech talent sourcing, the decision for the acquisition was a no-brainer. The greatest asset brought by C4A is that the company has a broad and deep understanding of the landscape of software engineering skills in Africa, including the availability of skills and the demand for capabilities.”
Gebeya is actually the brainchild of C4A. The latter will be totally absorbed within the Gebeya business model and branding strategy. The objective is to totally merge the two companies by the end of 2018. Other details of the deals are not disclosed. Mr. Bashir is now the CEO of the KAD ICT Hub in Kaduna, Nigeria, which will utilize the Gebeya Marketplace to provide opportunities for software talent coming out of Nigeria.
