Four African blockchain businesses have received $125,000 in funding from CV Labs, as well as participation in the CV Labs Global Incubation program and other CV VC-run initiatives.
CV VC, based in Switzerland, provides worldwide innovation teams with seed capital and an incubation program called CV Labs in exchange for equity.
In collaboration with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), CV VC is now extending into Africa, with plans to construct the continent’s first blockchain-focused accelerator and invest in 100 entrepreneurs over the next four years.
The program, which also includes BlockFrauds (UK) and CO2DAO (Switzerland), recently kicked off with “Africa Week,” in which CV VC partner Binance Smart Chain, the University of Johannesburg, and the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative collaborated with the innovators for a week in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.
As a result, four African entrepreneurs have been selected to participate in CV Labs Batch 03, gaining US$125,000 in cash and access to a three-month rigorous incubation program that includes four blocks of learning.
Here are the 4 selected startups:
Mazzuma (Ghana)
Mazzuma was founded in 2015 by Kofi Genfi and Nii Osae Dade, both of whom were selected to Forbes Africa’s Top 30 Under 30 Technology list in 2018.
The startup is a mobile payments ecosystem that specializes in facilitating transactions through the use of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain.
The company’s headquarters are in Accra, Ghana. Mazzuma already has over 300,000 users who use its service to send and receive remittances, and with this fund, it will be able to expand even more.
HouseAfrica (Nigeria)
HouseAfrica is a digital property validation system. HouseAfrica, a Nigerian startup, has created Africa’s first blockchain-based land and property registry, allowing banks, attorneys, and other parties to query and register land titles in less time.
HouseAfrica, founded in May 2018 by Nnamdi Uba to address issues with property ownership, such as duplicate land titles and illicit sales, as well as limited access to mortgages, provides an immutable ledger with a visual map reference, ensuring the integrity of land titles and expanding credit access.
Pravica (Egypt)
Pravica, founded in 2019 by Mohamed Abdou, uses blockchain to enhance user privacy and security in the communication business, notably messaging applications, where some of the most popular communication apps in the world record massive amounts of data breaches.
Pravica was able to significantly extend its customer base in a short amount of time by using Blockstack, a program for a user-owned internet.
CARMA (Nigeria)
CARMA was formed in 2020 by an international team of lending and tech entrepreneurs as the world’s first data marketplace.
The company provides services for organizations to share internal data, allowing them to make data-driven business choices and improving the quality of credit assessments for professional lenders.
Their services may be used across all industries, giving businesses a new revenue stream by monetizing data for their consumers, while entities and data seekers gain access to a comprehensive pan-industry data one-stop-shop. For more information, go here.
CV Labs has already incubated 22 businesses throughout the world, and Gideon Greaves, managing director of CV VC Africa, is excited to see the collaboration with SECO to assist the establishment of an autonomous blockchain ecosystem in Africa to come to reality.
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