The Africa Fintech Foundry (AFF), says it is collaborating with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to support 10 startups, to increase the adoption of eNaira in the country.
The Head of AFF, Daniel Awe, who said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Lagos, spoke on the sideline of the Semi-Final Pitching of the eNaira Hackathon 2022.
Awe said the top 10 startups, innovators, entrepreneurs, were among the over 5,000 that registered for the eNaira Hackathon.
He stressed the need to increase the adoption of eNaira in the country, as it enhances financial inclusion, supports the digital economy and improves 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 of this eNaira?
“A lot of people have also criticised eNaira, saying that they prefer cryptocurrency, but the truth is that eNaira is going to be a successful product when there are use cases, when people are able to see problems it is going to solve,” he said.
Awe said that AFF and CBN were collaborating on the hackathon to increase the adoption of eNaira.
“So the hackathon is a platform where innovators, developers, entrepreneurs, coders come together to solve problems, to create innovative ideas.
“When we layer that on eNaira, it means we brought in different players within the ecosystem – developers, coders, innovators, entrepreneurs, to come up with different ideas, different use cases that they can leverage on eNaira,
“This is so that the consumers of eNaira will now see the benefit of eNaira, they will have the opportunity to see the problem that eNaira will solve,” he said.
The hackathon is a platform where innovators, developers, entrepreneurs, coders come together to solve problems, to create innovative ideas.
Awe explained that the CBN’s role was just to create the platform for fintech startups and entrepreneurs the ecosystem to leverage to create solutions that would benefit the entire financial services space.
He informed that the 5,000 players within the fintech ecosystem applied for the hackathon were reduced to about 175 teams and eventually to 70 for the quarter final pitching.
He said 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 Nigeria.
“Now, 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.
“Afterwards, 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,” he said.
He added that the lucky winners will be guided by CBN and AFF, and by the time they establish good businesses with their innovations, jobs will be created and they will increase the adoption of eNaira, which will enhance wealth creation among the people. (NAN)
