Eric Annan bought Bitcoin when it was $350. He made a lot of money with his early forays into cryptocurrencies. But unlike most people who learn how to become professional traders and profit from cryptocurrencies, Annan was more interested in crypto technology.
His fascination with blockchain – the technology that powers cryptocurrencies – is why he founded Aya HQ, arguably Africa’s largest Web3 incubation program.
Behind Aya’s success lies Annan’s many failures, which inform the philosophy behind the program. The biggest barrier African founders face is not money, but psychology. For Annan, blockchain is a leveler, a technology that provides access to Africans.
Annan discovers cryptocurrency
Unlike the majority of people, Mr. Annan did not get into cryptocurrencies through the MMM scam or anything like that. Instead, his entrepreneurial endeavors led him into technology. Between 2013 and 2014, he quit his job at Huawei in Ghana to become an entrepreneur and started a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business.
To increase his chances of success, he followed the advice of a friend and moved to Nigeria. “The day after I arrived in Abuja, I had a paying customer. I was excited and glad I followed his advice.”
But what looked like a promising business ran into problems following the 2015 dollar trading restrictions. “The business collapsed because we could not send money to the company in Singapore to open a Nigerian account.”
Annan discovered cryptocurrencies in 2016 while trying to stay afloat after his first business went bankrupt. “That was the beginning of the evolution of my journey,” he recalls. Cryptocurrency marked a turning point in his entrepreneurial career. Fascinated by it, he decided to go beyond speculation and learn more about this technology.
The results of what he described as extensive research led to the creation of Digital Coding, one of the earliest crypto exchanges, or over-the-counter (OTC) platforms, in Nigeria. It existed alongside Nairaex, another early player in the space.
The competitive strategy was to speed up on-ramps and off-ramps, which at the time were still very slow. Annan’s solution was simple.
“We had a developer build a website for us. Once you submit your request on the website, we will send your cryptocurrency offline.”
The solution may be simple, but it paid off handsomely. “I went on vacation to the Seychelles,” Annan recalls.
But his entrepreneurial instincts kicked in again and he came up with another business idea during what was supposed to be a vacation. But this time it wasn’t just about making money. Annan’s inspiration came from something bigger.
Aya Head Office Building
While on vacation, Annan came across a report on the future of blockchain that barely mentioned Africa. The builders of this technology are primarily outside the continent.
For Annan, blockchain is where Africa needs to stop being just a consumer. He wanted Africans to be at the forefront of building blockchain. Blockchain is a technology he believes can transform the continent.
His first attempt at doing this was the launch of KubitX in 2018. On the surface, KubitX was a cryptocurrency exchange aimed at educating users and accelerating blockchain adoption, but it also recognized the potential of stablecoins early on. Based on this idea, Annan and his team entered into a signed agreement with Interswitch to build a trade finance platform.
However, it failed to start. “It was very painful. I was investing all the money I made from digital coding into KubitX.”
Annan made an important discovery from his failure. He realized that the problem was not that Africans could not or were not building, but that Africans were building in silos, often trying to outdo each other. Blockchain requires cooperation, not competition.
I was also reminded that thanks to the 2019 Techpoint Startup School, many African founders realized that they still have a lot to learn to scale their startup ideas and strengthen their technical skills.
These lessons were part of the inspiration for Aya HQ, but Annan was about to give up. “Life was hard, but I started thinking about building an infrastructure layer that didn’t require code.”
The layer he was trying to build was trust, which he believes is sorely lacking in Africa. He experienced this firsthand with KubitX. “My co-founders have betrayed my trust, my advisors have screwed us over, and you’re all alone.”
What is Aya Honsha?
Aya started as what Annan describes as a Web3-focused TalentQL. This is a trusted organization or community that ensures the capabilities of African talent and gives them access to global opportunities.
“The goal was to have you trust Aya. You don’t have to trust the talent; you just have to trust the community that vouched for the talent.”
Aya immediately attracted attention. But as Annan recalls, a lack of talent meant it wasn’t scalable, and while Aya had built a cordless trust infrastructure, it wasn’t fully utilized.
This challenge marked the beginning of our next iteration, Aya Fellowship, a blockchain-focused training platform.
“The Aya Fellowship was built around four thematic areas called PACE: Problem Solving, Adaptation, Creativity, and Empathy.”
Like many of Annan’s projects, this one received so much attention that Coinbase, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, awarded him a grant to start the fellowship.
“The goal was to train just 100 people, but we received over 8,000 applications.” The first cohort in 2022 trained 300 people, and the second cohort trained even more. Guided by Annan’s philosophy of building together, the training model took an unconventional approach.
Instead of training 300 individuals, Aya trained a team of 300 people, a team specially equipped to solve problems and build products to the minimum viable product (MVP) stage.
This approach to training influenced the next iteration of Aya. “By the time we finished the cohort, we had about 20 products built and ready to go to market.”
This helped Annan define what kind of company Aya would ultimately become: an incubation program for early-stage founders. “Before attending Techpoint Startup School, there were so many things I didn’t know as a founder. Incubation programs teach founders the science and art of building a startup so they don’t fail like I did.”
How is things going at Aya headquarters?
Lisk, a layer 2 blockchain, has become a partner in our early-stage incubation program. Since then, more than 50 projects have been promoted. Annan said Aya HQ is the world’s largest early-stage incubation program when it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
Our partnership with Lisk goes hand in hand as blockchain focuses on projects that solve real problems within Africa, rather than just creating another token.
Annan believes blockchain should work for Africa, and his vision may yet become a reality as African builders come together at Aya headquarters to solve the continent’s most pressing problems.
