In a major tech moment for Africa’s digital economy, Cassava Technologies and Gebeya Inc. have officially launched Gebeya Dala, a new artificial intelligence creator platform designed to open up digital creation to millions of Africans. The announcement was made in Cape Town on 17 December 2025, and signals a bold step forward in making AI tools accessible without the usual technical barriers that limit many aspiring makers, entrepreneurs, and creatives across the continent.
This launch represents more than a product release. It reflects an emerging belief among African tech leaders that the next wave of innovation must be built in Africa and for Africa, with tools that local communities can use, adapt, and scale without depending on external infrastructure.
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Opening the Door to Digital Creation for Everyone
Gebeya Dala aims to make digital creation as intuitive as possible. The founders of the platform argue that too many people across Africa have ideas but lack the training, tools, or infrastructure to bring those ideas to life. The platform is centred on inclusion and simplicity.
In practice, this means people with little to no coding experience can start building digital products and content simply by describing what they want to make. The platform currently includes modules that let users create apps and visual stories using conversational prompts. Local languages are supported, a move that acknowledges Africa’s rich linguistic diversity and lowers barriers that many traditional tools have yet to address.
For many young Africans, this could change the game entirely. Students, small business owners, storytellers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs now have a way to turn imagination into reality without having to first become expert coders or artists.
Key Features That Reflect Local Needs
At launch, Gebeya Dala brings two major capabilities to users:
AI App Builder
This feature allows people to create functional software applications simply by using plain language descriptions. It interprets user instructions, even in local languages, to generate working app prototypes. This promises to reduce the time and skill usually required to build software, especially for those trying to solve community-specific problems.
AI Comic Creator
Storytelling is deeply rooted in many African cultures, and the AI comic creator makes it possible to transform narratives into visual formats such as comics or manga. The goal here is to let people express their heritage, folklore, and original ideas in a medium that can be widely shared. This feature is intentionally designed for users without formal art training.
These modules underscore a bigger vision: that technology should adapt to people’s realities rather than force users to adapt to technology.
Built on African Infrastructure for Local Impact
One of the defining aspects of this collaboration is the focus on local infrastructure and data sovereignty. Cassava Technologies brings its cloud and GPU capacity to the partnership, ensuring that the heavy computing required for AI operations happens on African soil.
This approach delivers several benefits that are important for regional users:
- Data Sovereignty: User data stays within the continent instead of being processed in distant servers.
- Low Latency: Local infrastructure allows faster interaction with AI tools.
- Regulatory Alignment: Local hosting makes it easier to comply with national laws and standards.
Cassava’s investment in AI-ready data centres also supports plans to co-develop culturally relevant language models and AI tools that better understand African contexts and languages.
This focus on building and processing within Africa’s borders marks a conscious shift away from dependence on foreign cloud and compute services and reinforces a narrative of technological independence that many local developers and innovators have been calling for.
Leadership Views and the Road Ahead
Executives from both Cassava Technologies and Gebeya have emphasised that Gebeya Dala is more than a product launch. It is a strategic move aimed at creating opportunities for everyday Africans to participate in the digital economy.
Ahmed El Beheiry, CEO of Cassava AI, said the initiative is meant to widen access to advanced technology and help young creators leverage tools they might never have encountered before. According to him, this is part of a broader effort to build a genuinely inclusive digital economy where local ideas stay local but can scale globally.
Amadou Daffe, CEO and co-founder of Gebeya, described the platform as being for “the millions, not the few.” He highlighted that removing technical barriers unlocks creativity and innovation among everyday users, including young people in cities and rural communities alike.
The partnership also includes plans to take Gebeya Dala into universities, innovation hubs, and entrepreneurial networks across the continent. By doing so, the founders hope to ignite a wave of new digital initiatives that reflect the real needs and stories of African users.
What This Means for Africa’s Digital Future
The launch of Gebeya Dala comes at a pivotal moment. African technology ecosystems are rapidly evolving, and a new generation of creators is emerging with ideas that span finance, education, agriculture, entertainment, and more.
What sets this platform apart is its grounded understanding of Africa’s unique context. It embraces linguistic diversity, focuses on locally relevant AI infrastructure, and places powerful digital tools within reach of those who have traditionally been excluded from tech innovation.
By enabling people to build without great technical skills, Gebeya Dala could boost innovation, create jobs, and help establish a generation of African creators who are empowered to build solutions for their own communities and industries.
In the broader picture, initiatives like this feed into a growing narrative that Africa will not only participate in the global digital economy but shape it. Platforms like Gebeya Dala offer a glimpse of what is possible when technology meets local creativity and is powered by infrastructure rooted in Africa.
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