Gebeya, an edtech and online software outsourcing marketplace has closed a $2 million seed round investment to build the next generation workforce pipeline for a virtual 21st-century African Digital economy.
Gebeya says the round was co-led by Partech and Orange Digital Ventures and followed by Consonance Investment Managers.
According to Amadou Daffe, CEO and Co-founder of Gebeya, “This investment will enable us to further strengthen the community of top-notch tech talents and position Gebeya as the go-to for other companies as well as startups. Through this investment, Gebeya will be at the forefront of the digitization and utilization of Africa’s potential”.
Headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia since its inception in 2016, Gebeya has graduated over 600 tech talents, more than a third of whom have been matched with startups across Africa and the World.
With this investment round closed, Gebeya sets its sights on scaling up its model by implementing several vital changes to its ecosystem. Andela, one of the pioneers of tech capacity building recently stopped training junior developers and fired part of its team because of sustainability.
In 2019, the International Finance Corporation granted $500,000 in funding to Gebeya to provide scholarships to aspiring female software engineers. Through the Digital Gender Ethiopia Program, Gebeya will train a total of 250 aspiring female software engineers in Back-End/FrontEnd Engineering, Business Analysis, DevOps, Mobile Application and UX/UI Engineering. This program is an important stride towards mitigating gender disparity in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in Africa.
Moving into the new year, Gebeya has closed its seed investment round from the above global investment firms committed to the digital transformation of Africa. All of these companies play crucial roles in driving Africa’s tech sector forward by stimulating the intercontinental growth through impactful investments.
“At Partech Africa, we’ve been watching this space closely and we believe there is a large opportunity to address unmet demand and create value for the growing pool of African talent on the global stage. With Gebeya’s model and the team’s dedication to this challenge and the amazing progress they’ve made so far, we are really excited to join them in the next stage”, said Tidjane Deme, General Partner at Partech Africa.
Orange Digital Ventures Africa, a €50M dedicated investment initiative of Orange group on the continent expects its investment to expose Gebeya to multiple new commercial partnerships, supporting its expansion into Francophone Africa.
“With more than 60% of VC backed tech startups in Africa created in the last 5 years, our ecosystem is growing very fast and investments are booming, yet the talent gap remains wider. Skills shortage is a critical barrier to startups successfully exploiting the power of new technologies,” said Marieme Diop from Orange Digital Ventures Africa.
Consonance aims at finding new ways of leveraging the vast human capital of Africa. The company’s Investment Managers invest in early-stage and growing businesses across subSaharan Africa. Consonance backs entrepreneurs who are building large and profitable enterprises that create systems to enable national wealth creation. It focuses on the following sectors and themes: Access to wealth creation, financial and capital markets infrastructure, access to essential services (education, health & power), culture and media, logistics and mobility, retail at scale, food and its distribution systems and technology infrastructure services.
“Human Capital, the ability and productivity of people, is by far the most important asset any country that wishes to develop must nurture. We believe Gebeya’s platform would do just that across Africa, starting from Ethiopia. We are proud to partner with Gebeya and our co-investors on this journey,” said Mobolaji Adeoye, Founding Partner, Consonance Investment Managers.
Going forward, Gebeya has plans to scale up its training and marketplace services in Francophone Africa as well as launch its online African talent marketplace. This platform will provide substantial transparency for clients in choosing ideal talents best suited for their projects.
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