Exploring Real-World Problems and Solutions at our Next Blockchain Bootcamp

Crop2Cash: Crop2Cash bridges the gap between smallholder farmers in Nigeria and financial institutions by making formal financing easily accessible and offering a USSD-powered platform that only requires farmers to have a mobile number. During the bootcamp, Crop2Cash is planning to integrate Stellar into their platform to facilitate cross border payments for exported harvests and other financial services for existing and new smallholder farmers.

“Crop2Cash is a crypto-curious company, and we believe that this bootcamp will provide us with the much-anticipated opportunity to fully explore the Stellar blockchain for the growth of our business. We have successfully developed a solution to the problem of financing for smallholder farmers in Nigeria. The experience and understanding of the market that we have garnered is very instrumental in the successful implementation of this solution, and executing this solution will be another layer of implementation for us on our existing USSD-powered solution.”
– Esther Ajewole, Executive Assistant, Crop2Cash

Link: Link is a cross-border payments infrastructure company for Africa. They plan to become an anchor on the Stellar network and issue a Nigerian Naira stablecoin, which will power their existing infrastructure and products. This includes a cross-border payments platform with multi-currency accounts, virtual debit cards, and a wallet that supports USDC on Stellar.

PayBox: PayBox is interconnecting fragmented and local payment channels across Africa to make them interoperable while offering convenience at lower fees for SMEs and millennials. During the bootcamp, PayBox plans to build an MVP for an interoperable cross-border platform using stablecoins on Stellar, connecting major last-mile mobile wallets and e-wallets across Africa.

Kingdom: Based in Nigeria, Kingdom provides digital infrastructure and tools to enable businesses to participate in decentralized finance. Stellar's core mission is to create equitable access to the global financial system, letting people participate in a worldwide and stable financial network regardless of where they live. Kingdom plans to contribute to this mission by offering APIs, digital dollar accounts, and multi-chain support to businesses so that they can easily participate in the decentralized financial economy using the power of Stellar.

OYSTR Finance: OYSTR provides financial identities to the unbanked or underserved population in Africa, helping them get loans from financial institutions. It plans to integrate Stellar through a payment system so their users can receive and process cross-border crypto transactions smoothly through their platform.

Tribbe Nation: Tribbe is a platform that formalizes peer-to-peer lending in a simplified, transparent, and socially collaborative way. For the bootcamp, their team intends to build a cross-border transaction and group savings application built using USDC on Stellar.

“We are Kenyans with careers, families, and social circles that have seen the negative effects caused by COVID-19. Watching this devastation and the added negative impact digital credit applications with rigid structures have had on our peers and family members has led to us being frustrated by the lack of alternatives. We want to design a tool that can appreciate the culture while growing financial engagements among peers that do not damage relationships, but rather provide a social safety net for those in need.”
– Tonee Ndungu, Co-Founder and CEO of Tribbe Nation

Tembo: Tembo is a digital bank that helps people in Africa use mobile money to plan and manage their money via savings and investments. They plan to leverage Stellar in building a way for their customers to buy and hold crypto assets as part of their savings and investment portfolio, as well as a cost-effective means for their customers to buy and hold USD equivalents. Their initial target market is Tanzania, where they are closely working with local banks to roll out their products and services.

Centiiv: Centiiv is a project with the aim of connecting Africa to the rest of the world through blockchain. In order to achieve this aim, Centiiv has developed a utility token on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to power an ecosystem of technologically driven solutions in different sectors of Africa’s economy. They intend to integrate Stellar into their payment platform where their users can carry out seamless transfer of funds across Africa.

Bitpowr: Bitpowr is a blockchain and digital assets infrastructure business. It provides the building blocks for businesses and individuals globally to leverage blockchain and access the global digital economy, and for developers to build and scale their products on the blockchain, saving cost and time. By building on Stellar, Bitpowr will be able to provide businesses who are also interested in Stellar the tools they need to build and go live in days by using their infrastructure.

Pesakit: Based in Kenya, PesaKit exists to address the last mile supply-side challenges of mobile money and e-commerce in Africa through mobile money agents and merchants. They offer agents access to an interoperable float for their CICO, working capital loans to boost liquidity, and new revenue sources through the resale of value-added services and access to microinsurance to help them mitigate health and business shocks. During the bootcamp, PesaKit plans to integrate stablecoins on Stellar to improve their current lending processes and loan portfolio.

—-

We’re looking forward to working with each of these companies at the upcoming Blockchain Bootcamp and seeing what they build. If you’re an investor interested in joining the demo day where we will showcase the prototypes, get in touch. We’ll also be posting insights from the Bootcamp on our social media (Twitter and LinkedIn), so be sure to follow along there.