Gebeya, a software developer marketplace, yesterday announced its acquisition of Coders4Africa. A network of software and app developers.
"Gebeya Inc. (Gebeya) is excited to announce that it has acquired CODERS4AFRICA Inc. (C4A)," wrote Gebeya in the press release.
With the acquisition, the Ethiopian startup is looking to leverage the network Coders4Africa has built over time. This they will use "to further accelerate its growth and fuel its developer talent pool into its marketplace."
As part of the acquisition, Gebeya will take over the network of software developers spread across the continent.
"Gebeya is inheriting both C4A’s 3,500 plus network of African developers in 6 (six) countries that C4A galvanized over the past 7 (seven) years,"Gebeya wrote. Additionally, it will also "have access to C4A’s global partners."
With this in its corner, Gebeya believes its expansion plans across the African continent will be a lot more smooth and faster. "With this acquisition, Gebeya is able also to prepare more efficiently and rapidly its expansion in more African countries."
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Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed in the press release. But, we have reached out to Amadou Daffe, CEO of Gebeya, for the details and will update this as soon as he gets back to us.
But, commenting on the acquisition - in the press release - Amadou said;
"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"
While Coders4Africa's CEO, Yusuf Bashir, said that they have "trained thousands of African developers". Yet, the opportunities are what is missing for their community. He, thus, believes that this acquisition by Gebeya, that'll be worked on.
"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,” said Yusuf Bashir.
Established in 2016, Gebeya is among the many software talent marketplaces sprouting across the African continent. The startup has its headquarters in Addis Ababa with offices in Kenya, UK, and the US.
According to Amadou, the startup has so far raised at least $1 Million in funding. The one million came from a seed round. "We have raised additional funding since the $1M privately but choose not to disclose the amount," said Amadou.
Though, he maintained that they will soon disclose the details of a "significant" they have raised. "We are hoping to make an announcement of closing a significant round in the next couple of months."
Though, so far, the amount raised by Gebeya, when compared to Andela's over $81 Million, the latter trumps the former. Thus forging partnerships and acquisitions could Gebeya's answer to Andela which is rapidly expanding across Africa.
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UPDATE:
We reached out to Amadou Daffe and he informed us that he wasn't at liberty to disclose the details of the acquisition deal. "We are not in liberty [sic] to say [the terms of the acquisition], unfortunately. It was part of the deal [we signed] with C4A," he wrote.
Additionally, we had quoted CrunchBase which indicated that Gebeya had so far raised at least $7 Million in funding. Amadou said that it wasn't true. Though acknowledged the $1 Million seed round and also said they have raised additional funding since then but privately. We have since updated the article to reflect that.