Orange Digital Ventures Africa, the venture arm of telecom company Orange, will invest in an Ethiopian start-up that plans to produce talented African software engineers for telecoms and e-commerce industry
Orange will introduce Gebeya, a new age EdTech company, to existing commercial partnerships with its African subsidiaries and to other companies, as well as supporting its expansion across French-speaking Africa.
With this investment, alongside Partech Africa and Consonance Capital, Orange is confirming its commitment to leveraging its major assets to support tech entrepreneurship in Africa through its dedicated investment initiative, Orange Digital Ventures Africa, created in 2017.
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 stated that in the last three years, Gebeya has trained more than 600 new tech talents, 45 per cent of whom have already been placed for employment.
Marieme Diop from Orange Digital Ventures Africa, commented, “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.”
“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,” she added.
Gebeya has 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).
