In the midst of a decrease in web3 investments in Africa, says the Hashgraph Association that wants to help her recently launched Hackathon in building a blockchain infrastructure that supports crypto companies and decentralized financial projects.
The Hackathon: a permanent platform for growth
Despite a lively and young population -with 60% of Africans under the age of 25 -the share of the continent in investments in Web3 startups has fallen from $ 474 million in 2022 to $ 122.5 million in 2024. To help this trend reversing, some industrial players, but also the block -in -the -rowdetation, the willing -in -the -in -the -Ins Association, industry, but the act of the act of industry to reverse. (Defi) and Fintech projects.
According to Kamal Youssefi, co-founder and executive chairman of the Hashgraph Association, the hackathon that the Swiss organization launched in May is one of the ways in which it hopes to strengthen Africa’s crypto-ecosystem. As mentioned earlier, the Hackathon, a joint initiative at the Exponential Science Foundation, wants to enable more than 10,000 developers, students and entrepreneurs from 15 African countries.
In his written answers, Youssefi told Bitcoin.com News that his non-profit organization hopes to finance 50 or more innovative projects of the participants. Tha also strives to help the projects on the way to a successful market launch, he added.
“The Hackathon will not be a one-off event, but will be expanded every year. It will be a permanent platform for the development of the web3 ecosystem in the 22 countries that we support this year and will even involve more countries and continents,” said Youssefi.
In the launch of Hackathon, Tha announced that the winning project of the Hedera Africa Hackathon 2025 would receive a prize of $ 1 million, while all participants would gain access to training sources of Hedera Academy. The successful teams will be provided with “adapted venture construction and tailor-made entrepreneurship programs” that merge practical business insight with practical technical support for the web3 space.
Youssefi has also announced that the first dedicated prize pool has exceeded $ 1 million, and Tha expects this amount to increase even further in the coming weeks. Moreover, the non-profit organization also works together with various African governments and ministries that are responsible for digital transformation and administrative reform.
“We support them in the implementation of their strategy, in particular in the field of web3 education and professional training, as well as setting up technical infrastructure and developing digital solutions. Our footprints include Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia, Ivory Coast and Kenya,” said Yousefi.
A dedication to interoperability
Although the primary mission of Tha is to promote the approval of the ledger technology distributed by Hedera Hashgraph, Youssefi said that projects that build on other protocols will not be discriminated against. To prove this, he said that the Hedera Council is already gathering regularly to identify synergies and to look for potential strategic cooperation or joint project involvement.
“We also believe in interoperability and cross-chain solutions, and that there will be different blockchain and DLT platforms in the future that must communicate seamlessly and be interoperable. We are therefore open to any form of cooperation in this area,” said Youssefi.