Startups On Our Radar spotlights African startups solving African challenges with innovation. In our previous edition, we featured 7 game-changing startups pioneering logistics, artificial intelligence, law, and crypto. Expect the next dispatch on October 3, 2025.
This week, we explore seven African startups in the artificial intelligence, mobility, fintech and blockchain sectors and why they should be on your watchlist. Let’s dive into it:
1. Dingpay wants to replace cash and cards with one super wallet (Fintech, Nigeria)
Dingpay wants to do for Nigerians what Apple Pay has not, by building a digital wallet that works with local cards, banks, and event tickets, no matter the device. Dingpay is a digital wallet that enables easy access, management and contactless payment at the point of sale, bringing all essential payments into one place. Launched in January 2025, out of the founders wanting to replicate the ease of payments they experienced in the United Kingdom (UK), the startup wants to provide a more reliable way to make various payments both online and offline without users juggling multiple apps.
Users can store event tickets or flight tickets on the app and make payments for them. The startup has pivoted to a QR-based system, where merchants can scan QR codes from a user’s app to charge them for a transaction. Since its launch, it has signed up 4,000 users and processed ₦8 million ($5,336) in transactions.
Why we’re watching: Nigeria’s fintech sector is crowded, with some reports claiming that over 430 fintechs operate in the country. Dingpay is carving a niche for itself with its offline payments feature. While some payment providers already allow customers to be offline when making payments, Dingpay’s offline feature focuses on merchants, who do not need internet access to charge their customers for a purchase. All they need to do is scan a QR code on the customer’s device, and they get their payment.
2. Supplya gives retailers goods on credit (e-commerce, Nigeria)
Supplya is a business-to-business (B2B) platform that helps small retailers in Nigeria source consumer goods directly from manufacturers or otherwise. Through Supplya’s platform, retailers can order inventory and access short-term zero-interest credits. Their creditworthiness is determined by their transaction history (previous purchasing volume and frequency ) and a physical verification of their stores.
Supplya sources goods in bulk from its manufacturing partners, including Flour Mills of Nigeria PLC (FMN), Coca-Cola, Rite foods, and CWAY, and delivers orders through the free delivery its manufacturing partners provide or pickup by consumers from nearby fulfilment stores. They typically give users up to seven days to repay their loans. There is currently no penalty for defaulting on the loan; however, the platform intends to integrate an interest rate of 1% for each month a user defaults on their loan.
Why we’re watching: A 2024 Stears report reveals that Nigeria’s 40 million Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) face a financing gap estimated at $236 billion. For many who rely on informal lenders with steep rates, Supplya flips this model by offering interest-free inventory financing while still earning revenue from product margins and in-app advertisements from partners. The company has onboarded over 2,000 retailers and processed over $350,000 in revenue. Competitors like OmniRetail are digitising informal trade, but Supplya’s focus on interest-free financing makes it stand out.
3. SwarmZero will not rest until small businesses have their own army of AI agents (AI, Canada)
Founded in 2023 by Tomisin Jenrola, whose experience spans NASDAQ and PayPal, the startup is building AI agents for small and medium businesses. While big companies can usually afford to integrate AI into their daily operations, some small businesses lack the resources to build large-scale AI solutions that can improve business and employee productivity. SwarmZero makes AI accessible by letting anyone create specialised agents for specialised tasks without needing to code.
SwarmZero also doubles as a marketplace where users can publish agents based on their expertise and monetise them or hire existing skilled agents created by other users. Meaning a marketer can use his expertise to create an AI agent that can perform his duties, and someone who needs such skills can hire the marketer’s agent. The platform also plans to integrate Buzz, an AI virtual assistant, to help people complete tasks faster. Pricing starts with a free plan, while a $20 a month tier unlocks more features on the platform.
Why we’re watching: AI adoption feels locked behind paywalls and technical jargon. SwarmZero’s model democratises access to AI and creates new income streams. Competitors like Zapier focus on the automation of tasks, while giants like OpenAI tie users to a single model. SwarmZero’s edge is the flexibility that comes with its multi-model access, the ability for AI agents to collaborate with other agents in swarms, and the AI agent marketplace.
4. Kiasi wants to make it easier to invest in the creative economy (Creator economy, Uganda)
Kiasi is building a crowdfunding and investment platform for Africa’s creative economy. Kiasi’s goal is to make it easier for storytellers, filmmakers, and other creatives on the continent to raise funds directly from fans and investors. To use this platform, creators list their projects and upload supporting documents. They go through due diligence checks to confirm if the project is registered. Once approved, individuals or institutional investors can invest at different levels.
Unlike typical crowdfunding platforms, Kiasi offers both donations and equity contributions, meaning backers may receive a share of future revenue in the project. The platform takes a 5% commission on every dollar raised and embeds a revenue-tracking system to ensure transparency between creators and their investors. Although the startup is still in its pre-MVP stage, multi-currency support is part of Kiasi’s roadmap to make cross-border contributions possible.
Why we’re watching: Africa’s creative sector is booming, and institutions are constantly finding ways to support that economy. African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) recently committed $1 billion to film financing, and other Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) like the International Finance Corporation (IFC) are circling the space. Kiasi wants to be the bridge that connects these financing institutions with smaller creators by being a fundraising hub for African creatives. While global platforms like Kickstarter exist, they are generic and culturally distant for African creators.
5. Inkriv is betting that text written by AI can actually sound like you (AI, Nigeria)
Inkriv is an AI-powered writing platform designed for writers. Writers often complain that AI-generated text often feels flat or inconsistent. Inkriv is changing that by training its system to capture a user’s authentic writing style, their word pacing, sentence spacing, and rhythm. When users upload samples of their past work, Inkriv learns from these samples and then generates drafts that align with their personal tone. As the writer makes edits on the generated draft, these corrections are fed into the system to improve personalisation over time.
Beyond generating drafts, Inkriv offers three core tools: A thinking canvas for brainstorming ideas, where the user can note down rough ideas and prompt the AI agent to generate a structure from those rough ideas. It also has interactive artefacts that let writers embed mini apps, calculators or interactive graphics inside their articles. Finally, Inkriv has audio layers for attaching a voice recording to sections of an article for additional context. The platform also integrates fact-checking to reduce hallucinations and provides weekly story ideas based on the editor’s past writing style and usage of the thinking canvas.
Writers can either copy generated drafts from Inkriv and publish on Content Management System (CMS) platforms like Medium or WordPress, or they can decide to publish on Inkriv and share the link with other users. Although Inkriv says it’s not a CMS platform, it includes that feature to make it easier for creators to share their work.
Launched in June 2025, Inkriv leverages Gemini AI models, OpenAI models, and other open-source models in its infrastructure. Since its launch, it has had up to 1,000 users and generates revenue from its $15 monthly subscription model.
Why we’re watching: This startup is filling a gap left by general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini by bringing in personalisation in AI writing. Other AI writing tools like Claude offer some form of personalisation. However, Inkriv’s thinking canvas and interactive artefacts set it apart from its competitors.
6. Fekxir is building an AI-powered pathway for global talent mobility (Mobility, Nigeria/UK/US)
Fekxir helps skilled professionals unlock global opportunities through global talent visas and mobility programs. Fekxir’s founders launched the platform after observing an information and resource gap in the sector. Fekxir wants to make it easier for professionals, including tech experts and architects, to move across borders to do their best work through its models:
- Fekxir Enterprise, which offers a hands-on service where experts guide applicants on what a value proposition is, conducts a gap analysis of their experience and compares it with the country’s standards and best practices, and reviews their documents or evidence before submission, and
- Fekxir Software as a Service (SaaS), which is a self-service platform powered by proprietary AI. This AI leverages data from a user’s past experiences and the pathways available in this system to match them to the visa program they are eligible for.
Why we’re watching: Fekxir is leveraging technology in a sector dominated by visa agents. There is a surge in the number of Nigerians applying for the Global Talent Visa. By infusing technology to boost the success rate and optimise application processes, Fekxir could become the go-to platform for professionals chasing international careers. Fekxir has recently expanded to the US, targeting the EB1 and EB2 visas.
7. Hyperbridge wants to fix crypto’s biggest security problem (Blockchain, Nigeria)
Hyperbridge was launched in 2024 by a blockchain research lab, Polytope Labs. This product is a cross-chain bridge that allows blockchains like Ethereum and Polkadot to communicate securely without relying on intermediaries. It is also the world’s first verifiable bridge, meaning that it constantly verifies every transaction or asset cryptographically, ensuring assets move safely and seamlessly. It has processed over $30 million in transaction volume and integrated with over 14 chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, and Gnosis.
Hyperbridge is used to perform cross-chain transfers of tokens and data between connected networks, like moving an asset from Ethereum to Polygon. It acts as an interoperability co-processor that provides safety checks needed for cross-chain transfers. The product uses a decentralised network of relayers that ensures speed and security.
Why we’re watching: Traditional bridges like Celer, Nomad, and Multichain that use a group of individuals or companies (multisig communities) in their transactions have suffered high-profile exploits that have contributed to the billions of losses in crypto bridge hacks. Hyperbridge’s model of using verifiable proofs could close that security gap. It has raised over $5 million from its Initial Relayer Offering (IRO) and its seed round, led by Web3 Foundation and Scytale Digital.
That’s all for today. Expect our next dispatch on October 3rd. Know a startup we should feature next? Please nominate here.
Mark your calendars! Moonshot by is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Meet and learn from Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Get your tickets now: moonshot..com
