Industries in Africa that increasingly rely on technology are struggling to secure skilled workers and this thwarts innovation. Amadou Daffe, CEO of online talent marketplace Gebeya, believes his online recruitment platform can help by linking up available talent with prospective employers.

“There is a lot of talent in Africa. The problem is matching the right talent with the hiring companies,” said Daffe, adding that companies waste valuable time evaluating similar CVs without necessarily knowing exactly what skills are in demand.

Amadou Daffe, CEO, Gebeya.

Gebeya was started in 2016 and has presence in Ethiopia, Kenya and Senegal. There are currently 700 people enrolled on the platform, including software engineers, front-end and backend engineers, mobile developers, data scientists and DevOps from all over Africa.

Daffe added: “The only way we can transform the labour force in Africa and solve the employment problem is through the Gig economy.”

He said that as an entrepreneur he has created the platform, but the government must step in and work with these platforms to establish and support a Gig labour force.

“Let the governments figure it out,” he said. “Gig workers do not necessarily want to be protected, they want to make money. Worker protection solely rests on the government and union’s shoulders.”

Daffe is proud to have introduced a marketplace that can offer services and talent within the local environment, ensuring young people get jobs but also companies that recruit qualified people.

He compares his platform to competitors like Toptal and Upwork. While Toptal can offer tech talent for up to US$95 an hour, Africa-based companies and startups might not have the financial muscle to match that rate. Gebeya’s pricing ranges from US$8 per hour up to US$20 per hour, depending on a candidate’s qualification and level of experience.

Gebeya has a rich portfolio of work done for major telecommunications companies in Africa including Orange and MTN. Other notable clients include Ethiopian Airlines, ICT Authority of Kenya and alternative energy company d.Light.

AI in recruitment

Daffe believes the recruitment process should be automated and Gebeya is considering the deployment of AI to reinforce this. He is looking to partner with the likes of Google and Amazon to help.

He explained that an AI tool would be used to scrape data from the internet on recruits, analyse their application videos and quickly identify a suitable profile.

Daffe is expanding his services portfolio to include virtual assistants and business development talent to offer a complete suite to companies and start-ups in Africa.

According to an IFC e-Conomy 2020 report, Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa are key markets for tech talent, home to over 50% of 700,000 candidates across the continent.

It adds that the continued rise of tech talent in Africa is inspired by online learning tools.

An excerpt from the report reads: “The top two developer training pathways are through university programs and self-taught channels, such as online coding lessons and resources. Universities train 33% of software developers in Africa, while 31% are self-taught. Combined, online schools and boot camps, which continue to grow, produce 21% of developers.”

Gebeya aims to ramp up its talent numbers to 15,000 in the next two years establish itself as the premier marketplace to find great technology talent in Africa.