Mara has acquired over $23 million to build a cryptocurrency exchange platform across Africa. The exchange platform aims to open up the crypto ecosystem of Africans.
Mara is starting its major base in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya. The company secured funding from notable crypto platforms like Distributed Global, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research (FTX), infinite capital, TQ ventures, Nexo, Huobi ventures, and DAO jones.
The company’s plan is to spread across various parts of Africa, including East Africa and Francophone countries. One of its latest moves is the partnership with the Central African Republic. It can be recalled that CAR recently passed a bill to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender in the country, following the steps of El Salvador.
Mara’s Spread over Africa
The partnership between Mara and CAR will include providing guidance to the country on crypto strategic planning and effective usage to boost the economy. The partnership between the country and crypto-focused organisation is in tandem with the company’s objectives to bring about wider and easier crypto usage to the continent.
Due to economic and political instability, many currencies across Sub-saharan Africa have been devalued. So, it is just a very good time for Mara’s launch to come in. With the centralized financial system that persistently threatens local economies and even individual livelihoods, food prices skyrocket, and interest rates are high. There is a need for a decentralized system with all of these happening.
Although a cutting-edge technology like cryptocurrency has gained the interest of the young people in Sub-saharan Africa and technology-driven people, there are still some significant hurdles in using them. Some Global Exchanges already find it difficult to operate in the region due to some challenges in regulation and the difficulty in reaching African consumers in a real way.
Talking about contribution, Mara has developed the technical capacity of over 80 individuals and about two-thirds of them working with Mara and the rest working with outsourced developers.
In a mail to VentureBeat, the Chief Executive Officer of Mara, Chi Nnamdi, said, “The inefficiencies inherent to the old 20th centralized Sub-saharan African financial systems have presented an obstacle to the proper development of the proper development. Sub-saharan individuals and economies for decades.” He stated that a decentralized alternative to the financial and innovative world would give the continent a higher competitive edge.
