Fifty African blockchain startups pitch investors in Nairobi as regulators talk digital trade rules
The three-day Africa Blockchain Festival at the Sarit Expo Centre has drawn founders, venture capital and central bank and securities regulators from Kenya and Nigeria, with American investor Tim Draper among the participants.
Fifty African blockchain founders are pitching venture capital investors in Nairobi this week, with the Africa Blockchain Festival running from 15 to 17 October 2026 at the Sarit Expo Centre in the Kenyan capital.
As Tech in Africa reported on 16 October, the three-day gathering brings together the 50 selected founders, investors, regulators and technology industry leaders to look at investment opportunities and the direction of digital finance on the continent.
The founders were chosen through the festival’s startup fellowship programme. It gives them pitch slots, scheduled meetings with investors and a route to partnerships, and it puts each of them into an investment deal book that is placed in front of potential backers. The organisers say they intend to track the funding commitments and partnerships that come out of the event.
Among the investors taking part is Tim Draper, the American venture capitalist who founded Draper Associates. Draper has pointed to Africa’s growing participation in the global Bitcoin economy, particularly as individuals and businesses increasingly use cryptocurrency for transactions and cross-border trade.
The festival convener, Olubunmi Fabanwo, said the point of the event is to connect promising entrepreneurs with money, strategic partners and regulatory environments that support them. African startups, in his account, have the talent and the innovation to compete globally but need better access to investment networks and to policies that encourage technological development.
Regulators are in the room as well. Representatives of the African Continental Free Trade Area, the Central Bank of Kenya, the Capital Markets Authority and Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission are taking part in discussions on regulatory alignment, stablecoins, cross-border payments, digital assets and the use of blockchain in financial services. A closed-door policy roundtable will look at implementing the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, including how participating countries can build more consistent rules for digital transactions.
The organisers frame the event as an answer to two problems in the sector: limited access to growth capital and regulatory requirements that differ from one African market to the next.
For South African readers, the second of those is the one to watch. The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol is the continental instrument that would govern cross-border digital transactions among member states, and South Africa is a party to the agreement. How consistently it is implemented, and on what timetable, has a direct bearing on South African fintech and blockchain firms that want to sell into the rest of the continent without rebuilding their compliance for every border. The same applies to the payments question. Cross-border payments and stablecoins are on the Nairobi agenda, and they are live commercial questions for South African exchanges, payment providers and the banks that serve them.
South Africa also has its own regulatory track running. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority has brought crypto assets into the licensing regime as financial products, and the Reserve Bank has run its own work on a digital rand and on the treatment of stablecoins. What the Central Bank of Kenya, the Capital Markets Authority and Nigeria’s SEC agree on in Nairobi is therefore not an abstraction for this market. It is the beginning of the rulebook that South African firms will eventually have to work with if they want to operate across the continent.
Whether the Nairobi meetings produce anything binding is a separate matter, and the organisers have not claimed they will. The festival’s stated aim is to strengthen connections between emerging African technology companies and investors and to encourage discussion of regulatory frameworks that support blockchain adoption. On capital, the measure will be the commitments and partnerships the organisers say they will track after the delegates leave. On regulation, the measure will be what the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol looks like in practice, and when.
The event closes on 17 October.
