The Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF) has partnered with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support 10 startups, to boost the adoption of eNaira in Nigeria. The Head of AFF, Daniel Awe said this on the sideline of the Semi-Final Pitching of the eNaira Hackathon 2022.
Awe said that the top 10 startups, innovators, and entrepreneurs, were part of the over 5,000 startups that registered for the eNaira Hackathon.
He said that there was a need to increase the adoption of eNaira in the country, as it enhanced financial inclusion, supported the digital economy, and improved economic activities.
“eNaira was introduced by CBN in 2021 as a digital currency and a lot of people have asked the question, what is actually the usefulness? A lot of people have also criticised it, that they prefer cryptocurrency, but the truth is that it is going to be a successful product when there are use cases when people are able to see problems it is going to be solving,” he said.
”The hackathon is a platform where innovators, developers, entrepreneurs, and coders come together, to solve problems, to create innovative ideas. When we layer that on it, it means we brought in different players within the ecosystem – developers, coders, innovators, and entrepreneurs, to come up with different ideas, and different use cases, that they can leverage on eNaira.
”This is so that the consumers of Nigerian crypto will now see its benefit, they will have the opportunity to see the problem that it will solve,” he said.
He said that the semi-final would see 20 teams being selected for the finals, of which the top 10 would be assisted to boost eNaira adoption in the country.
“These top 10 potential businesses when they come out of the final of the hackathon, there is a cash prize for them. I think number one is going to get 5 million eNaira. Number two is getting 3 million eNaira. Number three, 2 million and the remaining, the next ten will get 1 million eNaira. Afterward, those top 10 will resume in the AFF accelerator programme, whereby some of them will get some funding to start up their businesses on their ideas.”
