How one of Africa’s fastest growing AI platforms was built out of Ethiopia
At 85,000 users, Gebeya is a fast growing African AI startup built out of Ethiopia. The company has ambitions to build a small language model in partnership with Cassava Technologies.
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At 85,000 users, Gebeya’s suite of AI products is growing fast, a feat achieved in just four months since launch. Out of the four AI products created, Gebeya Dala, or Dala for short, is the most popular.<br />
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Dala helps people build apps with natural language — no coding skills necessary. It is similar to Lovable, the $6.6 billion AI startup that inspired it. But rather than just being Lovable for Africa, Dala distinguishes itself by doing more.<br />
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Doing more means going beyond vibe coding, which may seem like one of the most popular use cases for AI currently, but Amadou Daffe, who founded Gebeya in 2016, says not many Africans are into it yet.<br />
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“I interviewed my nephews, who actually told me it would be cool if we integrated comic books. That way, you can create your own comic books and even sell them digitally. Turns out it is actually easier to do that than to create a vibe coding platform.”<br />
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Daffe is not new to building and iterating products. While Dala might just be four months old, Daffe has been building for 10 years. He founded Gebeya in 2016, and since then, the company has taken many forms.<br />
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“The first version of Gebeya (Gebeya 1.0) was actually a school, and the purpose was to train many high-end software engineers on the continent and eventually provide an outsourcing opportunity.”<br />
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The model was similar to Andela’s but focused on training talent across East Africa. It later evolved into a Pan-African talent marketplace, aspiring to become an “Upwork for Africa,” before pivoting again into a SaaS platform that allowed other entrepreneurs to run their own talent marketplaces.<br />
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Since then, Gebeya has shifted once more. This time into agentic AI products. According to Daffe, he is running a technological company, so it only made sense that he was keeping up with the times.<br />
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But the decision to build Dala came when a non-technical staff member built a working product with Lovable. While Lovable inspired it, Dala isn’t just another vibe-coding platform;...
