US-based software and consulting company Coders4Africa (C4A) has been acquired by Gebeya, an Ethiopian coders marketplace and training startup. The acquisition will enable the later to scale and build its developer talent pool.
Launched in 2016, Gebeya, 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.
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 need to be three essential components: entrepreneurs, capital and talent,” said Amadou Daffe, chief executive officer (CEO) of Gebeya.
“If one of these is missing, the 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.
