Technology
Gebeya Secures Equity Investment to Fuel Growth, Innovation
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
An undisclosed strategic equity investment has been secured by an Ethiopian tech talent marketplace, Gebeya Incorporated, from a Tokyo-based firm, Inclusion Japan (ICJ), to drive growth and innovation.
In a statement made available to Business Post, it was stated that the pre-series A investment from ICJ, which provides VC funding for startups, would enable Gebeya to transform from a single two-sided marketplace to a provisioner of marketplaces under a Marketplace-As-A-Service model.
The SaaS-enabled company will share its expertise in supplying vetted gig workers to hundreds of entrepreneurs across Africa who seek to launch their own marketplaces. They will benefit from the ability to quickly get their businesses online, creating thousands of gig economy jobs per marketplace across the continent.
ICJ has invested in 16 startups under their ICJ No. 2 Fund. The undisclosed investment in Gebeya is the fund’s first in Africa’s talent marketplace space.
Start-ups in Africa raised nearly $5 billion last year, breaking the 2021 record of $4.6 billion, in the face of a global funding downturn, according to Africa: The Big Deal.
Gebeya has already raised a total of $4 million in SEED funding from Partech Ventures, Orange Ventures, and Consonance since 2020.
This strategic Pre-Series A investment from ICJ will allow Gebeya further to strengthen its product offering, especially the Marketplace-As-A-Service one, but also beef up its sales team and processes to better serve its target markets both for its supply and demand sides.
Through its six years of operation, Gebeya has been dedicated to building Africa’s tech talent ecosystem through a combination of upskilling and job-creation opportunities for hundreds of working tech professionals while also supporting entrepreneurs looking to launch their own innovations.
The chief executive of Gebeya, Amadou Daffe, while commenting on the investment from ICJ, stated that, “ICJ has so far invested in two African-based startups, both in Ethiopia.
“Dodai, an e-mobility technology startup, is run by my fellow CEO Yuma, whose vision and commitment to Africa have made ICJ consider the second investment into Gebeya.
“ICJ investment is quite strategic in building a strong bridge between Japan and Ethiopia regarding investment, knowledge transfer, and business development.
“Gebeya has always thrived off of strong partnerships with like-minded firms who recognize Africa’s potential and that pooling resources is critical to achieving impact at scale.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with ICJ and are confident that this investment will help us to take our company to new heights.
“We are excited to see what the future holds and are committed to delivering the best possible products and services to our customers.”
Also commenting, the co-founder of ICJ, Yasuhiro Yoshizawa, said, “We are delighted to be investing in Gebeya.
“As a fund manager with a $100 million investment budget that will focus on the Africa region, I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to invest in Gebeya, which has the greatest potential in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
By Aduragbemi Omiyale
One of the players in the Nigerian gaming industry, Secure Electronic Technology (SET) Plc, has appointed Ms Leticia Otomewo as its acting secretary.
This followed the expiration of the company’s service contract with the former occupier of the seat, Ms Irene Attoe, on January 31, 2026.
A statement to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday said Ms Otomewo would remain the organisation’s scribe in an acting capacity, pending the ratification and appointment of a substantive company secretary at the next board meeting.
She was described in the notice signed by the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Oyeyemi Olusoji, as “a results-driven executive with 22 years of experience in driving business growth, leading high-performing teams, and delivering innovative solutions.”
The acting secretary is also said to be “a collaborative leader with a passion for mentoring and developing talent.”
“The company assures the investing public that all Company Secretariat responsibilities and regulatory obligations will continue to be discharged in full compliance with the Companies and Allied Matters Act, applicable regulations, and the Nigerian Exchange Limited Listing Rules,” the disclosure assured.
Meanwhile, the board thanked Ms Attoe “for professionalism and contributions to the Company during the period of her engagement and wishes her well in her future endeavours.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Russian government on Thursday confirmed it has blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as it moves to further control information flow in the country.
It urged Russians to use a new state-backed platform called Max instead of the Meta-owned service.
WhatsApp issued a statement earlier saying Russia had attempted to “fully block” its messaging service in the country to force people toward Max, which it described as a “surveillance app.”
“Today the Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp posted on social media platform X.
“Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” it said, adding: “We continue to do everything we can to keep users connected.”
Russia’s latest move against social media platforms and messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram comes amid a wider attempt to drive users toward domestic and more easily controlled and monitored services, such as Max.
Russia’s telecoms watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has accused messaging apps Telegram and WhatsApp of failing to comply with Russian legislation requiring companies to store Russian users’ data inside the country, and of failing to introduce measures to stop their platforms from being used for allegedly criminal or terrorist purposes.
It has used this as a basis for slowing down or blocking their operations, with restrictions coming into force since last year.
For Telegram, it may be next, but so far the Russian government has been admittedly slowing down its operations “due to the fact that the company isn’t complying with the requirements of Russian legislation.”
The chat service, founded by Russian developers but headquartered in Dubai, has been a principal target for Roskomnadzor’s scrutiny and increasing restrictions, with users reporting sluggish performance on the app since January.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigerian startup, Decide, has emerged as the fourth most accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent for spreadsheet tasks globally, according to results from SpreadsheetBench, a widely referenced benchmark for evaluating AI performance on real-world spreadsheet problems.
According to the founder, Mr Abiodun Adetona, the ranking places Decide alongside well-funded global AI startups, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Mr Adetona, an ex-Flutterwave developer, also revealed that Decide now has over 3,000 users, including some who are paying customers, a signal to the ability of the startup to scale in the near future.
SpreadsheetBench is a comprehensive evaluation framework designed to push Large Language Models (LLMs) to their limits in understanding and manipulating spreadsheet data. While many benchmarks focus on simple table QA, SpreadsheetBench treats a spreadsheet as a complex ecosystem involving spatial layouts, formulas, and multi-step reasoning. So far, only three agents rank higher than Decide, namely Nobie Agent, Shortcut.ai, and Qingqiu Agent.
Mr Adetona said SpreadsheetBench measures how well AI agents can handle practical spreadsheet tasks such as writing formulas, cleaning messy data, working across multiple sheets, and reasoning through complex Excel workflows. Decide recorded an 82.5% accuracy score, solving 330 out of 400 verified tasks.
“The result reflects sustained investment in applied research, product iteration, and learning from real-world spreadsheet workloads across a wide range of use cases,” Mr Adetona told Business Post.
For Mr Adetona, who built Decide out of frustration with how much time professionals spend manually cleaning data, debugging formulas, and moving between sheets, “This milestone highlights how focused engineering and domain-specific AI development can deliver frontier-level performance outside of large research organisations. By concentrating on practical business data problems and building systems grounded in real user environments, we believe smaller teams can contribute meaningfully to advancing applied AI.”
“For Decide, this is a foundation for continued progress in intelligent spreadsheet and analytics automation,” he added.
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