Grace Ashiru
Two AI companies — one rooted in Ethiopia, the other in South Africa — have joined forces to build what they describe as a seamless pathway from business idea to working product, targeting the millions of African entrepreneurs who have a vision but lack either the technical skills or the strategic scaffolding to bring it to life.
Gebeya Inc., the pan-African AI technology company behind Dala Studio, and PROFF-IT Investment Group trading as VukaOS, have announced a strategic alliance to transform how African startups are conceived, built, and scaled. The partnership integrates VukaOS — an AI-driven ideation and go-to-market engine — as a core module within Dala Studio, Africa’s all-in-one AI-powered creator platform. Together, they create a seamless “Plan-to-Build” workflow: entrepreneurs use VukaOS to validate ideas and develop strategies, then execute directly into Dala Studio to build apps, websites, games, comics, music, videos, and AI agents using natural language, with no coding required.Â
Amadou Daffe, CEO of Gebeya Inc., said the alliance closes the critical gap between business planning and technical execution — giving African entrepreneurs a path from strategy to product without having to jump between tools or hire expensive developers to test their ideas. Nico Kruger, Group Managing Director of PROFF-IT (VukaOS), said the integration gives founders a deterministic engine to qualify for success, describing it as not just another tool but a new way to build African businesses.
Dala Studio currently has over 100,000 users across 40 or more countries, supports 15 African languages, integrates with mobile money and airtime payments, and will be hosted partially on African infrastructure. Strategic partners include Cassava AI, M-PESA, Safaricom Ethiopia, and IONOS. The alliance will include joint go-to-market activities, shared strategic alignment, mutual promotion, and exploration of commercial opportunities arising from the integrated offering.Â
