MeliaCRED · Erkrath and Nairobi
We help European firms win with AI.
Hackathons that turn teams into managers of AI. Research on what AI does to services work. Connections to the best AI-enabled services firms in Africa's fast-growing cities.
- 70+
- AI hackathons and workshops since 2023
- 7
- countries, in Europe and Africa
- 133
- participant voices on record
- 12
- published studies on jobs, online work and AI
- 01HackathonsBuild. Your. Future. Now.In one day your team builds real solutions with AI and leaves as managers of AI, with performance certificates.
- 02ConnectionsThe Business Network.European business leaders and vetted AI-enabled services firms from Accra, Addis Ababa, Kigali and Nairobi at one table.
- 03SolutionsResearch & ConsultancyStudies, market scans and strategy work on AI in services, African services exports and the firms that deliver them.
Why MeliaCRED
Three lines, one idea
AI changes the nature of work, and the firms that win will be the ones whose people manage the machines well. We train those people in one-day hackathons. We study what AI does to services work, from contact centres to software, in Europe and in Africa. And we bring European business leaders together with the AI-enabled services firms in Accra, Addis Ababa, Kigali and Nairobi that already do this work for clients abroad.
The three lines feed each other. The hackathons show us how firms actually adopt AI. The research tells us where the work is going. The connections turn both into business.
What participants say
133 voices from our hackathons and workshops
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03 Solutions
Research on AI and the future of work
Twelve published studies on jobs, online work and AI in Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia, and 24 podcast episodes and talks with the people who do the work.
- 2025The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Global Business Services in Ghana and RwandaElvis Melia · SSRN working paper, University of Duisburg-Essen · Working paperHow can workers in global business services (GBS) in Ghana and Rwanda prepare for AI? We ran 14 day-long AI workshops with 279 GBS workers and trainees and surveyed 168 of them three months later. 70 percent said the workshop had changed how they use AI significantly or completely, and 69 percent said it saved them at least five working hours a week. More than 80 percent felt they had become better at tasks such as writing emails, researching and solving problems. Only 22 percent had access to comparable AI training, and 90 percent asked for a follow-up workshop. The paper closes with recommendations for firms, associations and governments.
- 2024Will AI replace jobs in Africa?Elvis Melia · GIZ, BMZ Digital Global · ArticleBusiness process outsourcing (BPO) offers relatively good wages and legal protection in a region where most work is informal. Can digital services exports drive growth the way manufacturing exports once did, and will AI undermine that path? Past technologies favoured skilled workers, which would keep BPO in established hubs such as India. Yet several randomised studies find that AI helps less experienced workers most. That finding favours young African service providers. BPO firms should therefore consider new delivery locations in Africa: this creates jobs and reduces poverty.
- 2023Where in the World Will Global Business Services Now Find Workers? Are African Labor Markets Ready?Elvis Melia · FDI Alliance International Magazine, pages 18 to 19 · Magazine articleA short piece for investment promoters: global business services firms are looking for new delivery locations, and Africa's fast-growing cities are the candidates. The article asks what African labour markets need to be ready for them.
- 2023The 3 a.m. Phone Call: A Gendered Perspective on the Working Conditions of Kenyan Online WritersElvis Melia, Elizabeth Muthoni Wahu, Anne Gichuku, Peninah Murimi, Otto Kässi · GIGA Working Paper No. 330, German Institute for Global and Area Studies · Working paperPhone surveys of Kenyan online platform workers in 2018 and 2023 show that men outnumber women by about four to one. Two factors explain the gap: the low expectations men hold of women's ability to deliver, and the short-notice night work with tight deadlines that the platforms demand. This 'manager-controlled flexibility' is hard to meet for women who also carry household and care work. The pattern differs by subsector: academic writing, where the demands are highest, has fewer women than transcription.
Conversations with Elvis, the podcast
5 ways AI can help BPOs
Nick Clark · Boston Consulting Group · 2025
Elvis speaks with Nick Clark, Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), about how artificial intelligence is reshaping customer experience (CX), outsourcing, and the global business-services industry. Drawing on his experience advising Fortune 500 companies and leading transformation programmes, Nick unpacks what AI adoption really looks like inside enterprises, from copilots and agentic workflows to the human challenges of change management. They explore five practical ways AI can help BPOs, the rise of AI-related fraud and trust-and-safety outsourcing, and how automation is creating new kinds of work even as it transforms existing roles.
Doctor of Stars and Teacher of AI
Yabebal Fantaye, PhD · Ethiopia · 2025
Elvis speaks with Dr. Yabebal Fantaye, a cosmologist turned AI educator and co-founder of 10 Academy, about turning African talent into global AI professionals through intensive boot camps. From analysing the universe with 10,000 supercomputers at Berkeley to building Ethiopia's AI workforce pipeline, Yabebal shares his journey from pursuing a Nobel Prize in physics to AI education across 21 African countries.
Clients and workshop hosts, 2013 to 2026
