Ethiopian coders marketplace and training startup Gebeya has acquired US-based software and consulting company Coders4Africa (C4A) to further accelerate its growth and build its developer talent pool.
Disrupt Africa reported in 2016 on the launch of Gebeya, which aims to graduate 5,000 students in Ethiopia over the next five years. The startup also launched in Kenya in January of 2017, and has since expanded to Silicon Valley and the UK.
The startup aims to create a new type of employee market, linking highly-trained tech professionals with the companies and startups who need them. C4A, meanwhile, was founded in 2009 and is a one stop-shop for software cross-platform development and high-quality web and mobile app solutions.
With the acquisition, Gebeya said it would be able to rapidly expand into more African countries. The startup 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 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, chief executive officer (CEO) of Gebeya.
“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.”
Yusuf Bashir, CEO of C4A, 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.”
