Rinchi
TechInAfrica – Gebeya has announced its expansion plan to Francophone Africa starting from Senegal. The expansion plan is a response to the growing tech potential in West Africa. With a vision to create a greater future of the inclusive African youth, the company has maintained its strong presence in East Africa.
Compared to the other African regions, Francophone Africa is lacking the potential for technological growth for over the years. This is mainly caused by the lack of funding and inadequate human capital. As a result, digital entrepreneurs in this region are discouraged from creating innovative solutions.
However, the situation seems to change with the presence of incubators and programs like L’Afrique Excelle, CTIC Dakar, Jokkolabs, and CIPMEN. These programs will gradually transform the region to be ready to embrace digital technology. Moreover, skilled digital entrepreneurs will feel encouraged to strive for success.
The research from the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator shows that Africa’s technological transformation increases with a total of 442 active tech hubs across the continent including accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and other innovation centers. Around 45% of the numbers are located in five countries; Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa.
For over the years, Anglophone Africa has taken the lead in the tech scene. However, Francophone Africa is now beginning to take the technological opportunities starting with Senegal in the West African countries.
CEO and Co-Founder of Gebeya, Amadou Daffe said: “Senegal was the first country in Africa where Coders4Africa (C4A) established itself. We could see even then the potential that the country possessed.”
Daffe continued, Currently, Gebeya has a network of 1000+ software developers amassed in the Francophone region under C4A. As more and more clients look into Senegal in search of tech talents, it is imperative that the available resources are leveraged to ramp up on capacity fairly quickly. Our biggest client Orange Sonatel has on-boarded Gebeya engineers a couple of months ago with plans to add more throughout the year. We graduated the first training cohort of engineers that they sponsored 2 months ago and it was just a month ago that we started a second cohort.”
Senegal has a pool of young people with 60% population under the age of 25. Gebeya sees this as an opportunity to play an active role in the development of these great numbers of youth. Its expansion to the country will allow it to nurture tech talents, especially software engineers and work with local and international organizations for job creation.
Source: appsafrica.com
