A company called Mara has raised roughly $23 million to build out a pan-African crypto exchange. The company operates in several African countries including Lagos, Nigeria, and Kenya.
Mara Has Raised a Lot of Money for Africa’s Crypto Future
Among the financial firms to participate in the funding of the new exchange included Infinite Capital, DAO Jones, Huobi Ventures, TQ Ventures, and Distributed Global. Mara has also established a new partnership with the Central African Republic, which has become the first nation on the continent to declare bitcoin legal tender and take a page out of El Salvador’s books.
Mara has appeared during a time when Africa seems to be bogged down with political and economic instability. The company seeks to help young Africans get used to incoming technology (including cryptocurrency) so that they are prepared for the jobs and monetary trends of the future. Thus far, the firm has about 80 individuals working in-house, though Mara also employs several remote developers.
Chi Nnandi – CEO of Mara – said in an interview:
The inefficiencies inherent to the old 20th centralized Sub-Saharan African financial systems has presented an obstacle to the proper development of Sub-Saharan individuals and economies for decades. A decentralized alternative (which will include but not be limited to finance, art, ownership, infrastructure, and business as a whole) will give Sub-Saharan Africans an alternative to these tired systems. Through this digital financial system, through this freedom, the region will find itself in a much stronger competitive position before other parts of the world. Mara’s mission is to facilitate a more equitable distribution of capital by providing a decentralized alternative that spans across tribes, classes, cultures, and countries. Our goal is to close the gap in opportunities for Sub-Saharan individuals and establish a financial infrastructure that they can build their lives upon.
Schuster Tanger – co-founder of TQ Ventures, one of the many companies to take part in the funding round – expressed excitement about what Mara is doing, mentioning:
We are pleased to partner with Mara as it embarks on building a digital financial system for Sub-Saharan Africa. With the right resources, this region has potential for mass adoption of cryptocurrency. To that end, the local knowledge and specialized skills of the Mara team is quite promising.
Availability of the Services
The crypto exchange will be available to customers in Kenya, Nigeria, and surrounding nations, though the Mara Wallet app will be available to all who shop at the App and Google Play Stores. Nnandi says:
While there are other crypto exchanges in Africa, there is yet to be an indigenous African crypto exchange. That’s where Mara comes in. We are a pan-African crypto exchange built by Africans for Africans. Support can be accessed easily through means people in Africa are familiar with… To have real success in Africa, you need to have alignment with the regulatory regime, especially when it comes to crypto.
