(Yicai Global) Aug. 8 -- China's leading ride-sharing company, DiDi Chuxing, has announced a strategic partnership with Careem Networks FZ LLC, the largest car-hailing platform in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Beijing-based tech giant has pledged to invest in Careem, and both sides will share resources and cooperate on intelligent transportation technology, product development and relevant operations.

Founded in Dubai in 2012, Careem has made an app that supports English, Arabic, French, Urdu and Turkish. Its business network covers more than 80 cities in 13 countries -- Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine -- with over 250,000 drivers and 12 million registered users.

"The total population in the Middle East and North Africa is growing rapidly amid increasing social and economic structural diversity, which has created an enormous market for ride-sharing businesses," Cheng Wei, DiDi's founder and chief executive, wrote in a press release.