This is not another story about a flashy crypto marketplace or a new DeFi protocol. This is about a Rwandan-founded startup, Afrikabal, pushing to rewire the backbone of African trade.
Built on the Lisk protocol and shaped in Rwanda’s pro-innovation environment, Afrikabal’s ambition is simple but seismic. It wants to become the SWIFT of agriculture for the Global South.
The Problem: Trillions in Trade, Stuck on Paper
Every enduring monopoly begins with a secret. For Afrikabal, it is that agriculture is the world’s largest industry without a trust fabric.
This is to say that finance has Visa and SWIFT, whereas logistics has Maersk and DHL. Meanwhile, agriculture, which employs hundreds of millions, still runs on pen, paper, and middlemen. That vacuum isn’t inefficiency; it’s opportunity.
SponsoredAgriculture moves trillions of dollars across Africa, yet the systems behind it remain antiquated. Logistics are opaque, settlements drag for weeks, and smallholder farmers face crippling delays in receiving payments.
For Afrikabal’s founders, Oghenetejiri Jesse (CEO) and Joseph Rukundo (CTO), this inefficiency is more than a technical flaw. It is a structural bottleneck that keeps African trade locked out of its own potential.
“Most platforms in the space are built for one-off interactions. A farmer here, a buyer there. But what’s missing is an operating system that connects the entire trade cycle with verified trust,” Jesse told BeInCrypto.
That is what Afrikabal is building, with Lisk’s protocol making it deployable, scalable, and accessible for builders in Africa.
This mindset shift ought to be encouraged, with several founders telling BeInCrypto that Lisk gives builders this kind of support from the very early stages.
“The main thing is that many founders get caught up in chasing easy money within crypto—whether it’s grants, early users through DeFi apps, or marketing airdrops. What’s often missing is the founder who says, ‘I want to build something for the right reasons—to solve a real-world problem,” Dominic Schwenter, COO at Lisk, told BeInCrypto.
Beyond Consumer Apps: Infrastructure First
In a region where blockchain often gets reduced to quick-win products, staking schemes, token speculation, or small consumer wallets, Afrikabal is taking a contrarian stance. Its bet is on infrastructure, not retail hype.
By using blockchain as a secure verification and settlement layer, Afrikabal aims to create rails that governments, cooperatives, and large institutions can trust.
This goes beyond “putting money in and getting money out.” It’s about building a backbone for billions in agricultural flows.
“In Africa, the problem is not the lack of ideas. It’s the lack of infrastructure that institutions can adopt at scale. That’s why Afrikabal isn’t a consumer play. We’re building something governments and big players can actually use,” Jesse says.
Schwenter echoed that view, noting that infrastructure, not hype, will define the next era of blockchains.
Sponsored Sponsored“If you’re not pushing speculative use cases or launching lots of tokens at once, then in certain industry metrics, you might not shine as brightly. But we see those metrics as short-term noise. Moving forward, every chain must specialize instead of chasing every possible use case,” the Lisk executive articulated.
For instance, Jamit, built on the Lisk blockchain, utilizes Lisk’s Layer-2 (L2) blockchain to offer creators lower costs and enhanced efficiency. They also enjoy better scalability for their audio content.
Meanwhile, listeners get engagement rewards while creators reserve ownership of their content. This dynamic reshapes the podcasting sector by putting ownership, rewards, and creative freedom at the forefront of audio content.
Why Lisk, Why Now?
Jesse says Afrikabal’s choice to build on the Lisk blockchain was intentional, citing developer-friendly architecture and focus on accessibility. Lisk allows startups to build quickly without compromising scalability.
For Afrikabal, Lisk provides the technical runway to move beyond pilots into real-world trade integration. This sentiment resonates with recent remarks from Ikenna Orizu, founder and CEO of Jamit.
“Every major blockchain pitched us, and we even tested a few, but we picked the chain that showed up. Lisk already has what the others have and the edge that matters the most for us: intentional, hands-on support for African founders building for a global audience,” Orizu said in an exclusive statement to BeInCrypto.
Beyond Lisk, the Afrikabal executive also highlighted Rwanda’s unique positioning, indicating how it completed the equation for them.
SponsoredRwanda’s Builder Advantage
Often called one of Africa’s most forward-looking innovation hubs, Rwanda offers more than favorable regulation. It provides an ethos.
“Startups in Kigali are encouraged to solve real problems, with the government actively supporting technology that improves efficiency and transparency,” Jesse pointed out.
This environment has made it fertile ground for builders like Afrikabal, who don’t just want to chase speculative capital but want to build infrastructure that lasts.
In Rwanda, Afrikabal sees a chance to scale, not in spite of regulation, but with it.
From Marketplace to Operating System
Afrikabal insists it is not just another marketplace. While most platforms in agri-trade connect buyers and sellers, Afrikabal is positioning itself as the operating system for verified trade.
That means integrating payments, logistics, and compliance into one blockchain-secured layer.
If it succeeds, the result could be transformative, potentially delivering a pan-African and eventually global infrastructure where agricultural trade settles with the same reliability as cross-border finance.
Sponsored SponsoredThe Long Game: Becoming the SWIFT of Agriculture
Afrikabal’s vision is bold: to evolve into the SWIFT of agricultural trade. That means becoming the rails upon which institutions, governments, and multinationals rely for secure, verifiable, and fast transactions.
“There’s no real solution right now in the market…If you can win that first market and prove the model, you don’t just become another startup. You become the infrastructure everyone builds on,” Jesse stated.
Why This Matters for Crypto
For crypto, Afrikabal’s story suggests that blockchain’s most profound use cases may not come from speculative finance but from solving billion-dollar bottlenecks in the Global South.
For Africa, it’s proof that innovation does not have to mimic Silicon Valley. It can originate from Kigali, built on Lisk, and scale outward.
“…the Global South’s agricultural trade may finally run on rails built not in Silicon Valley or Beijing, but in Kigali,” Jesse noted.
Afrikabal and Jamit may still be in their early innings, but their ambitions point to something larger: the rise of African builders who are not content with apps or tokens. They want to build the rails for real economies.
Afrikabal isn’t asking to be seen as just another Web3 startup. It wants to be the invisible infrastructure beneath African trade, delivering rails that make commerce faster, safer, and more inclusive.
In doing so, it reflects both the promise of Lisk as a developer platform and Rwanda’s role as a launchpad for bold, infrastructure-first builders.
With Africa’s relevance extending beyond narrative, Schwenter says Africa is not just another marketplace. Rather, it is a movement toward something bigger.
“We definitely see Africa as highly relevant. Many things can be developed here that also fit global markets, even if they start by solving a local problem. If you can build a system here and solve a real problem for a local market, it’s very likely that it will translate to other regions around the world facing similar issues.”
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