Gebeya, an Ethiopian headquartered company specialized in matching highly skilled and certified African information technology (IT) professionals across the world, graduated its first batch of highly skilled software developers in Ethiopia.
After accepting seventy candidates, the company has been mentoring trainees for the past 6 months since the launch of its IT training academy in Addis Ababa last September. The graduation took place on May 20th 2017, after months of intensive hands-on training, the company said, noting that Gebeya places its graduate professionals onto its developer platform.
“This online marketplace for African IT talent matches certified and multilingual developers with clients to develop and implement innovative and cost-effective technology solutions. Gebeya also incubates tech entrepreneurs; supporting them as they develop their own ideas or solutions,” the company said in its statement.
Gebeya is building a self-sustainable ecosystem that trains, hires, and incubates the best of African talent. These three cornerstones of Gebeya fuel one another, according to the company. In addition to Ethiopia, Gebeya has recently launched a new training center in Kenya with future plans to expand into other African countries. The overall training objective regardless of curriculum is to produce a client-facing IT workforce.
Gebeya also acts as a gateway to clients and high-quality practical training to be used in accord with current technologies and platforms that currently dominate the global software industry.
Mikias Amdu, a full stack developer and one of the top talents at Gebeya, was able to work for an international client from France, before even graduating.
In his particular case, he happened to already have exceptional experience in the specific technology framework that the client needed. For Abnet Shimeles, another top talent, Gebeya was the level-up she needed to boost her software-developing company.
The experience provided her with the platforms she needed to scale her business. Gebeya’s youngest talent, 15-year-old Ismael Kedir, was able to build a website for a local Ethiopian restaurant www.opiumaddis.com in just one week.
Dawit Abraham a mobile game developer and another top talent, founded “Kukulu,” a 3D mobile gaming APP that Gebeya is currently incubating and is set to launch in August 2017. Gebeya believes that every qualified individual deserves a chance at a better education and so works hard to make financial aid available to those that need it.
In order to encourage more women enrollment, Gebeya offers them partial and full scholarships upon acceptance. Gebeya’s founders, Amadou Daffe and Hiruy Amanuel, who met in Silicon Valley, launched the venture with the aim of shaping a robust African IT industry on the continent.
“The long-term objective being, to develop affordable and efficient software solutions that will contribute to world markets. Concurrently, Gebeya and its growing capacity are enabling Africa to participate in the global digital economy by providing competitive solutions within the sector,” the company said.