With this investment, alongside Partech Africa and Consonance Capital, Orange is confirming its commitment to leveraging its key assets to support tech entrepreneurship in Africa through its dedicated investment initiative, Orange Digital Ventures Africa, created in 2017.
Orange will expose Gebeya to commercial partnerships with its African subsidiaries (its West African subsidiary, Sonatel is already a client of Gebeya’s) and to other companies, as well as supporting its expansion across French-speaking Africa. Since its inception three years ago, 600 tech talents have graduated from Gebeya, with 45 per cent placed for employment thanks to Gebeya’s platform. From e-commerce and telecommunications to finance, Gebeya has built a reputable client base working with global companies driven towards creating sustainable change.
Amadou Daffe, Gebeya’s founder and CEO, said, “this investment will support the implementation of several vital changes a decisive time for the start-up. It will allow the start-up to gear up for future growth and implement its vision to Empower Africa through Technology”.
The company intends to put in place a reinforced executive team to provide further strategic and operational leadership advancing its future ventures. Furthermore, with the incentive of expanding to French-speaking Africa, Gebeya will vigorously act on the training of tech talents who will be pivotal in the digital transformation of Africa.
Finally, the company will work on its online talent outsourcing platform, with the ambition to become the hub of talent acquisition and worldwide outsourcing, and make Gebeya a go-to company, providing the best of African tech talent. It will provide substantial transparency for clients choosing the best suited engineers and address rising youth unemployment in Africa.
“With more than 60 per cent of VC-backed tech startups in Africa created in the last five 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.
She went on to add, “At ODV Africa, we are happy to support the hardworking Gebeya team and strongly believe in their ability to build the appropriate and sustainable pipeline of really talented African engineers to meet future skills needs on a global scale.”
Confirming the social significance of this venture, earlier this year Gebeya also received support from the International Finance Corporation to provide free scholarships to aspiring female software engineers. In 2020, the start-up will train 250 aspiring female software engineers thus contributing towards mitigating gender disparity in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
About Orange Digital Ventures
Orange Digital Ventures is an international early-stage technology investment fund worth €125 million. It invests in innovative start-ups in connectivity, networks, SaaS for companies (cloud, AI, big data, cybersecurity, etc.), FinTech and the Internet of Things. Supported by the Orange group, the fund offers “smart money” by helping to create synergies with various business units and its 263 million customers in 29 countries.
For more information, visit digitalventures.orange.com or follow us on Twitter @Orange_DV.