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20 minutes with Co-Founder of GEBEYA Ltd

Contributing over 1.216 billion to the world, Africa needs a wide variety of professionals and its youth need jobs. This is where the idea for GEBEYA came to be. GEBEYA is a company based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a vision to expand IT capabilities through training and presenting some of the best African talent to global business markets. Back in April 2016, the idea to create socio-economic impact through education was realized by two visionaries and has since helped many Ethiopians through their model and into the global IT industry.

On January 2017, I was able to meet with one of GEBEYA’s co-founder’s and self-made entrepreneur Hiruy Amanuel. He was generous enough to give us an insight into his life and GEBEYA’s community. Hiruy Amanuel, the native of Ethiopian descent, is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur at the early age of 26. He Identified a business opportunity in luxury cars enabling himself to make enough liquid assets and start his own brokerage firm. In 2013 Hiruy also co-founded A.J VENTURES which is based in Silicon Valley. He’s travel to Ethiopia numerous times helped Hiruy to see the promising investment opportunities in Ethiopia. He was mainly interested in the education and technology sectors. Amadou Daffe the other co-founder of GEBEYA Sayed “Hiruy mentioned that he had always wanted to build a school in Africa. . .” as written by the IAFRICAN NATIVE CONTENT TEAM on August 01, 2016. Hiruy acknowledges that it is this ambition that lead him into co-founding GEBEYA.

“Gebeya’s IT marketplace is like a vehicle or a car, and the trainees are its fuel; without them the car won’t really goes anywhere. . .” Said Hiruy, when asked to explain the value of the training given at GEBEYA. “The more trainees, the more fuel. The longer the car can go and depending on the industry which needs trained professionals, GEBEYA is a great screening platform serving as a bridge in filling the gap in IT services.” He then went on to explain how GEBEYA provides job opportunities for its trainees and graduates. Trainees upon their course completion, and in some cases before training are completed, will be provided job opportunies from all over the world. “The client can be right here in Addis working for a client in Europe, Asia, or the US. . . When the contract is closed we pay the developer up to 80% of the total contract. The developer knows how much the contract costs so there is a lot of transparency in our process.”  Said Hiruy pointing out to one of his trainees.

Hiruy believes that the current demand for IT services is low in Ethiopia and generally in Africa when compared with the rest of the world. “Here in Addis, many Ethiopians don’t see the value in IT software and solutions yet as the complementing infrastructure still lacks stability.” He then expands on one of the objectives of Gebeya, he speaks “…Along with generating revenue from IT services and training, our primary goal is to train and mobilize African capacity around the continent…”. He points out what makes GEBEYA different explaining how it is designed to help individuals in acquiring a specialized kind/set of development skills. GEBEYA also prepares job opportunities in which trainees can participate to generate income. Hiruy added “… On average, our developers make back the money they spent on initial Gebeya tuition costs on their first contract. Everything else is profit after that.” he went on and included a message for us “. . . If you want to become a specialized developer or have a great idea that needs solutions or funding, here at GEBEYA we can help you realize those dreams and make them into a reality.”