Orange Invests in Ethiopian Telecoms, e-commerce Start-up

ENA,February 14/2020 South African giant telecom operator, Orange, is investing in Ethiopian start-up that plans to develop software talent across Africa for telecom and e-commerce. 

Investment Manager at Orange Digital Ventures Africa (ODV), Marième Diop, said Orange will introduce the company, Gebeya, to its existing commercial partnerships across Africa and supports its expansion in French-speaking African countries.

She stated that it is a well-timed investment for Orange, which is expected to be interested in one of Ethiopia’s new telecoms licenses, as the government opens up the market to competition.

The investment will support the implementation of several vital changes a decisive time for the start-up and allow the start-up to gear up for future growth and implement its vision to Empower Africa through Technology, she pointed out.

“With more than 60 percent of VC-backed tech start-ups in Africa created in the last five years, our ecosystem is growing very fast and investments are booming, yet the talent gap remains wider,” Marième said.

In the last three years, Gebeya has trained over 600 new tech talents, 45 percent of whom have already been placed for employment, said Diop.

“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,” Dipo stated.

She noted that “Skills shortage is a critical barrier to start-ups successfully exploiting the power of new technologies.”

Gebeya is actively addressing rising youth unemployment in Africa with the help of the International Finance Corporation through providing free scholarships to aspiring female software engineers, combating gender disparity in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

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Orange South Africa is a French multinational telecommunications corporation, which has 266 million customers worldwide.