The Birth Of Gebeya Inc., The Continent’s First Pan-African Freelance Talent Marketplace

Gebeya Inc. the Pan-African source for freelance professional talent, today announced the launch of its revamped marketplace, the first of its kind in terms of reach in Africa. Prior to investment, Gebeya operated mostly a manual non-scalable marketplace model. Gebeya raised a USD 2M seed investment in Feb 2020, co-led by Partech and Orange Ventures and followed by Consonance Investment Managers, to set up the machine for scale, fully automated and digitized.

Gebeya.com connects Startups and Small and Medium Enterprises to professional talents from across the continent. The platform offers a self-service single gateway for clients to create a profile and gain instant access to pre-vetted, qualified talents offering professional services and ready to work. Gebeya customers can choose from remote or on-site talent in fields such as software development, graphic design, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, product development, and digital marketing.

Gebeya.com boasts of features such as an intelligent matching algorithm that considers location, language, and budget; provides automated matching for a seamless experience on a single dashboard, the ability to create a profile and request talent at no cost; and an option to hire individual talent with specialized skills or build a core team.

As companies embrace the need to stay on pace with an evolving global job market, Gebeya unlocks a new source of eager, available professional talents from across Africa.

Gebeya.com a new transition

Since its inception, Gebeya has played an integral role in aggressively moving the needle forward, bringing Africa’s competitiveness to the forefront of the global digital and technical landscape. New features on the platform will connect businesses with talent in minutes.

Visitors to the Gebeya Marketplace are matched with freelancers from a carefully curated pool, trusted by multinational telecommunications companies like Orange, as well as e-commerce startups such as Limestart, and logistics startup Paps.

“It’s time for businesses to leverage the sharp skills and fresh perspective that freelancers infuse into a permanent workforce,” said Amadou Daffe, CEO and Co-founder of Gebeya. “Africa doesn’t have a talent deficiency, it has a matching problem and that is what Gebeya is seeking to address through the deployment of a true Pan-African freelance marketplace,” he added.

“Freelancers are part of a smart, agile hiring strategy. We plan to expand our pool of skilled freelance talent to 15,000 within the next 3 years,” noted Amadou.

Growing global need for on-demand workforce

Africa claims only 1.4 per cent of the total addressable gig and freelancer economy industry, a figure estimated at $1.5 trillion with North America accounting for over half of the world’s freelancers, according to a 2017 report from Freelance Statistics. USD 486 million of that amount went to tech freelancers. According to the same report, there are seventy seven million identified freelance workers globally.

As experts project, freelancers will constitute 80 per cent of the workforce by 2030, Gebeya’s vision is to unlock the power of the skilled workforce on the continent, and increase the number of innovative startups leading the helm of digital transformation.

Untapped skilled talent ready to work

Demand for African talent on the Gebeya platform is Pan-African, from East to West Africa—and reaches as far as the EU and the US, as quality and caliber is comparable to freelancers in those markets. Clients are only matched with talents who have successfully passed vetting, testing, and an interview. Freelance talents possess experience in exploding sectors like fintech, healtech, agritech, and logistics & supply chains, meaning individual entrepreneurs, startups, and large enterprises alike will benefit.

Features of the Gebeya Marketplace include:

Intelligent matching algorithm that considers location, language, and budget
Automated matching for a seamless experience on a single dashboard
Ability to create a profile and request talent at no cost
Option to hire individual talent with specialized skills or build a core team
A dedicated Account Representative
Smooth handling of administrative and finance processes
Access to a diverse pool, ready to work remotely

Gebeya.com closes the gap between companies and their next best hires. In the first six months since the launch of the Gebeya Talent app, thousands of freelancers from 27 African countries have flocked to join the pool.

Gebeya.com brings African skilled talent to a hungry global market

The best freelance talent marketplaces thrive on quality, not quantity. As companies embrace the need to stay on pace with an evolving global job market, Gebeya unlocks a new source of eager, available professional talents from across Africa.

In December 2020, Gebeya launched its talent mobile application, attracting more than 2,000 applicants to-date. Since then, the marketplace has onboarded hundreds of highly-skilled freelance professionals. With an efficient and rigorous 4-stage talent recruiting and client matching process, Gebeya has yielded a 35 per cent increase in talent onboarding growth month-over-month.

The upgraded gebeya.com demonstrates the company’s continued success identifying and sealing the gaps for entrepreneurs within many companies, while maximizing a growing freelance market that produces competitive, multilingual, certified and skilled talent.