ACR Weekly: Ejara Raises $8M (#35)

December 2, 2022

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Africa Combined

For the week ended 27 November, Africa Combined volume on LocalBitcoins was $1.36 million, which represented an 8% improvement on the previous week’s volume of $1.26 million. Albeit at the low end, Africa Combined volume is now back inside the range it was playing in prior to the FTX shock. However, the recovery is primarily being driven by South Africa at this stage. Transactions came in at 4,318 for the week ended 27 November, which represented a 2% decline on the previous week’s count of 4,420 and marked a new low for 2022.

South Africa

SA’s volume for the week ended 27 November was $677.8K, which represented a 26% improvement on the previous week’s volume of $539.7K. Transactions came in at 1,087 for the week ended 27 November, which represented an 2% improvement on the previous week’s count of 1,063. The gap between SA & Nigeria for the top spot in YTD volume terms now sits at $334.4K, in SA’s favour.

Nigeria

Nigeria’s volume for the week ended 27 November was $345.7K, which represented a 2% improvement on the previous week’s volume of $339.8K. Transactions came in at 1,182 for the week ended 27 November, which represented a 3% decline on the previous week’s count of 1,218 and marked a new low for 2022.

Kenya

Kenya’s volume for the week ended 27 November was $213.5K, which represented a 1% decline on the previous week’s volume of $215.2K. Transactions came in at 1,379 for the week ended 27 November, which represented a 6% decline on the previous week’s count of 1,461.

Funding – Ejara

On Monday, Cameroon’s Ejara announced that it recently raised an $8 million Series A funding round co-led by Anthemis and Dragonfly Capital. Founded by Nelly Chatue-Diop, the crypto and savings platform serves users in Francophone Africa and is well-known for advocating for the use of non-custodial wallets among its users. TechCrunch reports that in October 2021, Ejara had 8K users in Cameroon and that it now has over 70K users in nine countries across Francophone Africa. Bucking crypto winter woes, the company has seen 10X revenue growth and 15% month-on-month transaction volume since October 2021. Newsletter #23 covered Ejara’s pilot program with Mercy Corps Ventures to offer tokenized government bonds to low-income individuals in Cameroon.

Pilot – Fonbnk

Speaking of Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV), on Tuesday, MCV and Fonbnk announced the launch of an educational pilot program dubbed “Learn to Earn.” The program is focused on financial and Web3 literacy and digital earning opportunities offered in Fonbnk’s ecosystem as a market maker. Fonbnk provides an on-ramp service where prepaid sim card users can exchange their airtime credits for the USDC stablecoin. Fonbnk brings airtime credits on-chain by representing them as a token called MIN, which is then convertible against USDC. Market makers are active traders on Fonbnk’s marketplace that provide liquidity for the conversions between airtime and MIN. One of the goals of the pilot with MCV is to measure whether market making is a viable source of income for economically marginalised groups.

Rebrand – Zone

Newsletter #30 covered a Nigerian fintech software company called Appzone. That edition of the newsletter went over the progress of Appzone’s layer-1 payments network known as Zone and how Appzone’s CTO had shared that “virtually all the commercial banks” in Nigeria are now signed up to Zone. This week, TechCabal reported that the company is rebranding to Zone and carving out its Banking-as-a-Service platform into a separate company named Qore. Said to be Africa’s first layer-1 blockchain network, Zone is already licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria and compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Currently, Zone’s nodes sit at licensed financial institutions in Nigeria, but the company has set a goal to have Zone’s nodes widely distributed across the continent over the next five years.

Layoffs – Lazerpay

On Tuesday, crypto payments company Lazerpay announced that it will be downsizing its team in order to extend its runway. Lazerpay founder Njoku Emmanuel shared on Twitter that earlier this year, seed round investment talks fell through due to tough market conditions and disagreement over terms, ultimately leading to this point. The announcement also revealed that since launching in 2021, Lazerpay has enabled over 3,000 businesses to accept stablecoin payments. In November 2021, Nestcoin announced Lazerpay as its first investment.

Partnership – Algorand & Y9

On Wednesday, digital microfinance company Y9 Bank announced a partnership with Algorand Foundation – the organisation which oversees the Algorand blockchain ecosystem. The partnership will see Y9 leveraging the Algorand blockchain to deliver its mobile offerings. At present, Y9 is focused on Tanzania, but it has plans to expand to other markets in East and West Africa.