Vincent Li - Afrikan Heroes

Adaverse Accelerator Backs Innovative Kenyan Fintech Melanin Kapital in Pre-Seed Funding Round

August 7, 2023

Vincent Li, Founding Partner at Adaverse

Adaverse Accelerator, a prominent accelerator within the Cardano ecosystem in Africa and Asia, has revealed its strategic investment in Melanin Kapital, an innovative Kenyan fintech platform dedicated to connecting African SMEs with green financing. By participating in the ongoing pre-seed funding round, Adaverse is providing support to Melanin Kapital through mentorship and facilitating its Web3 integration on the Cardano blockchain.

Green Financing: Empowering SMEs in Africa Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in driving Africa’s economic growth, accounting for about 90% of the continent’s employment. However, these enterprises often face significant financing challenges, particularly in traditional capital markets. In contrast, green finance, a critical subset of the financial sector, has emerged as a potential solution, especially for emerging innovations in developing countries. It encourages SMEs to adopt sustainable practices, enhancing their contributions to global sustainability and climate change mitigation.

Melanin Kapital has emerged as a platform harnessing the opportunity gap between the evolving landscape of green finance and the pressing need for climate action in Africa. Through a combination of AI, blockchain technology, and climate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), they provide a bespoke AI climate scoring system integrated within a digital lending platform. This empowers lenders and businesses to effectively track climate-centric KPIs and access carbon credits for SMEs, aligning business performance with environmental goals. It also opens up new avenues for SMEs to access Africa-focused sustainable finance and climate financing.

Vincent Li, Founding Partner at Adaverse, commented on the investment, stating, “Melanin Kapital is trailblazing Web3 financing, ingeniously innovating and redirecting the flow of green capital to SMEs making a huge impact in Africa. Through innovative digital strategies, they’re amplifying opportunities for capital and green investment. This is significantly contributing to the growth of Africa’s digital economy, and we are excited to support this great vision.”

Insights From the CEO, Melanie Keita Founding Story Melanin Kapital was conceived in 2020, prior to the COVID pandemic, with the mission of sustainably financing SMEs in Africa. Melanie Keita, the CEO, observed the challenges faced by local entrepreneurs in securing business financing during her return to her roots in Mali and Congo after spending her childhood in France. With her experience in Investment and Development Banking in Europe, she recognized the significant funding available for Africa but inaccessible to impact-driven SMEs. She collaborated with her co-founder, Ian Minjire, a seasoned engineer and entrepreneur in the sustainability and clean energy sectors, to establish Melanin Kapital. Their shared vision was to create an accessible financial ecosystem for African business owners, bridging the gap between international funding and local enterprises.

The vision of Melanin Kapital is to transform the financial sector in Africa through digitalization, revolutionizing the way underserved businesses receive funding. Their platform acts as a conduit for climate financing directed at SMEs, assisting in cash management, CO2 tracking, and converting positive environmental impact into financial opportunities. Since launching operations in Kenya, they have experienced significant growth across East Africa, onboarded over 500 businesses, processed $1.5 million in green financing applications, and expanded their reach to Europe with a branch in Germany. Their comprehensive product suite includes MelaninVest, MelaninBiz, and MelaninGrow, providing integrated solutions for individuals and businesses seeking green capital raising and financing in Africa.

Melanin Kapital is exploring the transformative power of tokenization to uniquely monetize the impact of African SMEs. They place a strong emphasis on standardizing real-time CO2 savings data collection, an integral part of their strategy. As they extend their reach into new markets, they see blockchain technology as a promising solution for secure and transparent data collection, addressing informality and high-risk perceptions while offering opportunities for credit data ownership and trading. The adoption of the Cardano blockchain, which supports sustainability, is facilitated by access to robust development tools and dependable processing power.

Over the course of three years as fintech innovators in Kenya, Melanin Kapital has recognized the immense potential of blockchain technology, despite its inherent complexities. The support received from Adaverse and Emurgo Africa has significantly strengthened their position in East Africa and bolstered their plans for expansion into West Africa. The Adaverse accelerator program has provided them with remarkable access to a robust network of Cardano experts and startup resources, accelerating their product development significantly. The level of investor engagement they have received is highly valued by Melanin Kapital.

Shogo Ishida, Co-CEO of EMURGO Middle East and Africa, commented, “Africa is taking giant leaps towards climate awareness and carbon neutrality, and Melanin Kapital is at the forefront of this movement. By empowering innovative and carbon-conscious SMEs, they’re driving sustainability in an impactful way. Their approach to green finance aligns with Cardano’s vision and underscores the transformative power of blockchain in the global sustainability narrative.”

Accelerator Adaverse is a visionary Venture Fund and accelerator focused on Cardano, with a strong presence in Africa, Asia, and other regions. It is a joint venture between EMURGO Africa, a subsidiary of EMURGO, the official commercial arm of the Cardano Blockchain, and Everest Ventures Group, a leading blockchain and digital asset venture studio. With an impressive portfolio of over 35 startups across ten sectors in eight countries, Adaverse fosters the growth of Web3 solutions. Offering support ranging from $100k to a million, it empowers founders with personalized mentorship, cutting-edge tech support, and robust global connections.

Adaverse is committed to allocating more resources to expand its reach in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, to help launch innovative solutions, particularly Cardano-based projects, as part of its efforts to usher in a digitally-advanced global economy.

Adaverse Accelerator Melanin Kapital Adaverse Accelerator Melanin Kapital

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard

African Blockchain Lab Bags $6m To Power Crypto Adoption Via Vibra In Africa

December 6, 2021

African Blockchain Lab has obtained a $6 million Pre- Series A investment to help support the launch of its crypto wallet VIBRA, which will help increase digital asset usage in Africa.

A group of international investors led the Pre-A round, including renowned African venture capital firms Lateral Frontiers VC, CRE Venture Capital, and Musha Ventures, as well as international blockchain investors Dragonfly Capital, Hashkey Capital, SNZ Capital, Fenbushi, Cadenza Capital, Head & Shoulder X, LeadBlock, Hash Global, Bonfire, Krypital, Despace, and others.

“African Blockchain Lab was founded with a singular mission — to drive the mass adoption of digital assets and blockchain technologies in Africa. With the backing from our strategic investors, we intend to bring world-class tech stacks, projects and innovation to the African continent, starting with our first product VIBRA,” Vincent Li, co-founder of African Blockchain Lab, said.

Vibra crypto — ***Vincent Li, co-founder of African Blockchain Lab***

Why The Investors Invested

“Crypto adoption in Africa is growing exponentially. In fact, we believe that crypto can realize its potential as a technology and asset on the continent while also deepening financial access to the millions left out of traditional financial services. We have seen the importance of user-experience and community building when adopting new technologies and we are confident in VIBRA’s management team mission of making crypto a mainstream product for African consumers,” Lateral’s Steven Grin said.

“We believe Africa has a generational opportunity to build a more collaborative and inclusive financial ecosystem using decentralized technologies, in which all players are winners. We are excited to partner with the world class team at Vibra to make this happen,” Pardon Makumbe, Managing Partner at CRE Venture Capital
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“Dragonfly has a long history of investing in infrastructure companies for the crypto asset class, from Bybit to Amber Group. We are bullish on the category as trading and investing are typically the first use cases for adoption in any emerging markets, therefore infrastructure companies should be built to facilitate these activities. Over the past years we are starting to see the surge of trading in Africa, but we believe this is just the beginning. VIBRA is well-positioned to deliver a great product for day-to-day African users,” Mia Deng, Partner at Dragonfly Capital, expressed her belief in VIBRA.

“We always believe Africa has a huge potential for crypto trading. And trading is not only an investment action, it’s also based on local demand for payment and currency stability. VIBRA has a great resource of use cases, which can facilitate them deploying in-app crypto trading and payment. We believe they can fulfill their vision of crypto mass adoption,” Managing Director of HashKey Capital, Deng Chao said.

A Look At What The Startup Does

African Blockchain Lab (“ABL”) is a blockchain technology business and the developer of the African crypto app VIBRA, which was founded by blockchain investment firm Everest Ventures Group.

VIBRA is a crypto social trading software with a focus on Africa. VIBRA provides a simple approach for newbies to study and trade with a community of specialists, allowing Africans to go from zero to crypto master with ease. Developed by a global team of blockchain experts, tech enthusiasts, and investors to address the growing demand for cryptocurrencies in Africa’s emerging economies, starting with Nigeria.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer