Incentro Africa denies laying off staff at the beginning of 2024

Incentro Africa, a Kenyan reseller of Google Workspace and cloud services with operations in Rwanda and South Africa, did not lay off employees at the beginning of 2024, TechCabal has learned. Chatter from industry insiders claimed that the company fired some staff members.

According to Incentro, the situation involved two cloud salespeople on year-long contracts with the company. However, after failing to meet their quarterly sales targets, Incentro decided against renewing their contracts.

In an email to TechCabal, Dennis De Weerd, Incentro Africa CEO, said that the company communicated this decision to the affected ex-employees six weeks before their contracts were terminated. Per the company, their employment was discontinued according to standard practices for commission-based roles.

Efforts to get comments from the dismissed staff were unsuccessful after they declined to speak on the matter.

Incentro Africa also confirmed that no other employees have been let go since then. However, two other employees left the company around the same time for positions at different companies. “These departures are part of the normal employment cycle, with individuals pursuing other career opportunities,” De Weerd said.

De Weerd further told TechCabal that the former salespeople initiated legal action for unfair dismissal. The case is ongoing, but Incentro says it prefers to settle the matter internally.

In September 2023, Incentro Africa made the headlines after it initiated a liquidation suit against Twiga Foods, a Kenyan B2B agritech company, over a $261,000 Google cloud bill. The issue was resolved, with Twiga agreeing to settle the debt after securing a $35 million convertible bond deal in November 2023.

In 2017, the company launched a software development business focusing on talent sourcing and client partnership but pivoted to reselling Google Workspace and cloud services in 2020. The change came after its software business was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Incentro clarified that even then, it did not terminate employees.