In order to further accelerate its growth and build its developer talent pool, Gebeya, Ethiopian coders marketplace and training start-up has acquired US-based software and consulting company Coders4Africa (C4A). The start-up aims to create a new type of employee market, linking highly-trained tech professionals with the companies and startups who need them.
With the acquisition, Gebeya said it would be able to rapidly expand into more African countries. The start-up inherits C4A’s network of more than 3,500 African developers in six countries, as well as 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 start-ups in Africa. However, for a robust and sustainable start-up ecosystem, there needs to be three essential components: entrepreneurs, capital and talent,” said Amadou Daffe, Chief Executive Officer, Gebeya.
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CEO of C4A, Yusuf Bashir said his company was a pioneer in training coders across Africa, having pre-empted all the existing coding schools. “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,” he said.
“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 become 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 was launched in 2016 and it aims to graduate 5,000 students in Ethiopia over the next five years. The start-up also launched in Kenya in January 2017, and has since expanded to Silicon Valley and the UK.