Celo Foundation held its third Africa Web3 Fund workshop in Kampala, Uganda, on November 8, 2022.
The Celo Africa Web3 Fund, which launched in early August 2022, aims to help scale African startup projects building on Celo in support of blockchain technology and Web3 adoption.
There has been a batch of particular workshops happening previously in Kenya, Nigeria and now Uganda, and the last event will be held in South Africa.
Over 20 startups and established companies in the community were in attendance, which included Muda, Crypto Savannah, Binusu, Capital Savy, YellowCard, Refactory, Kanzu Code, Spe Taxi Cab, Walimi and many others.
Here is how the event went down.
Umar – Uganda Ecosystem Lead
Umar Sebyala took the lead by introducing the general audience to the Celo Ecosystem and exploring the Celo Africa Web3 Fund. This fund will be an ongoing support to the players who will decide to get involved with the Celo ecosystem. The fund will include support in different dimensionals i.e developers, educators, VCs and mentors to help startups scale.
This will also include workshops, office hours, deal rooms where one pitches their idea, or shares a deck, gets insights from the team and investors, and if the criteria is met, the project proceeds to the next steps.
Umar also discussed the opportunities of leveraging blockchain technology and bringing DeFi solutions to the African ecosystem and how the founders and startups can utilize the Celo ecosystem to provide solutions to the community’s existing problems.
“There has been an increase in funding by 1,668% in Q1 2022 vs Q1 2021 in Africa.” – Umar
Umar shared a quick demo on the Celo Reserve exploring different celo assets i.e. cUSD, cEUR and presented the potential of different use cases ranging from mobile crypto usability, community Finance, DeFi, ReFi, NFTs, UBI and financial inclusion, Regenerative Economics etc.
In addition, Umar also presented on the Celo ecosystem and explored more of the mobile crypto use cases and how the Celo assets can be utilized by startups and how relevant it is to the community for financial inclusion and freedom.
Daniel Kimotho – Kenyan Ecosystem Lead
Daniel kickstarted the discussion and shared insights on how this will help startups scale if they utilize and build using blockchain technology to solve the current existing problems in the community to achieve financial freedom and inclusion. The fund will provide support to developers, mentors, and venture capitalists via a continuous support system.
Attendees presentations
Peter Kakuma shared what Kanzu Code has been doing over the past years by providing digital solutions to the local market and the world at large. Kanzu Code has been offering various services i.e. custom digital solutions in form of software and integrations, Banking systems solutions, and inclusive financial tools development.
Brian Tweheyo represented Binusu and shared insights on how crypto transactions have evolved over the past years and how Binusu is bridging a gap of accessing crypto in the community through deposits and withdrawals.
He shared the vision of the company and how it democratizes access to financial services and crypto markets by creating easy to use products that enable everyone to borrow, lend, save, invest, and exchange value. Binusu offers such services and has been in the industry for 4 years + including Celo assets i.e Celo and Celo stable Coins
Elius Ezron did a quick demo showcasing the progress of CashOut, a fast instant cashing out system of crypto currencies. CashOut is a API product bridging the gap being faced in the community of using multiple exchanges or wallets to withdraw crypto to fiat currency. Interestingly, Elias revealed that crypto payments(micro payments less than 1000 USDT) have increased by 80%.
Jovan Mwesigwa of Shukuru Crypto, a crypto wallet solving the complexity of transactions in the crypto industry, shared how the product is targeting the communities that have found it hard to transition to use of smartphone technology. The solution seeks to provide access to crypto by sending, receiving, deposit and wallet creation using Dial Code(USSD) for the small phones.
Ernest, a developer relations, presented on the Celo Composer and Celo Sage.
Celo Composer is a starter pack built on the React-Celo toolkit that helps you quickly develop full stack applications on the Celo Blockchain. The Celo Composer helps you navigate your way in building DeFi applications and eases bringing brilliant and amazing ideas to life.
Celo Sage is a community driven program where the community creates content like articles, tutorials, and videos to help developers onboard onto the Celo ecosystem.
