For decades, African art has grappled with a quiet but costly problem. That is, once a work is sold for the first time, its journey often ends there. Ownership records are lost, authenticity becomes difficult to verify, and resale opportunities dry up.
Unlike the Western art market, where paintings by Picasso or Basquiat can be resold for decades and steadily increase in value, African works of art often disappear into private collections with little historical trace.
Founded in 2024 by Adaobi Orajiaku and Emediong Umoh, Atsur positions itself as the backbone of that narrative-changing technology. By combining verification systems, data research, and blockchain-powered recordkeeping, the startup is building an infrastructure that can track, authenticate, and securely trade African artwork over time, enabling art to function not just as culture but as a long-term asset.
What Atsuru is doing
At the core of Atsur is a technology platform designed to preserve the history of African art while enabling a functional secondary market for art objects.
“The mission is to preserve Africa’s artistic heritage,” says Atsur co-founder Adaobi Orajiaku. “This will put creative players in the art industry at the forefront of the market. Our main problem is that we don’t have enough visibility into our records, but with technology we can solve that.”
The startup verifies artwork and tracks its ownership lifecycle. Each verified work is issued with a Certificate of Authenticity that includes detailed records of the artist, original sale, and all subsequent ownership transfers. This creates a permanent trail of provenance, which is an important element for trust, appreciation, and resale in a mature art market.
Beyond individual works of art, Atul works with collectors and institutions to audit existing collections. The company examines old items, connects ownership history, assesses current market value, and ensures proper documentation is in place for insurance, resale, or legacy planning.
Its scope also extends to the public sector. In 2024, Atour partnered with the National Gallery of Nigeria to document and archive artworks in the national collection, digitize records, and reconstruct historical ownership data.
Although Atsur integrates blockchain to store verified records in an immutable and privacy-conscious manner, the platform is not a marketplace in the traditional sense. Instead, it serves as an infrastructure layer that enables secure transactions, asset tracking, and long-term value creation within the African art ecosystem.
Victoria Fakiyah – senior writer
Tech Point Digest
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From software engineering and art collections to building Atour
Adaobi Orjiaku, a software engineer, has always been interested in the art world as an enthusiast and collector.
“I didn’t even realize I was a collector,” Olaziak explains. “I love being around art and have supported artists since the beginning.”
The idea for Atsur began to take shape in 2022, when Orajiaku led a blockchain community focused on onboarding engineers to Web3. At the peak of the NFT boom, she and her colleagues frequently discussed its long-term sustainability. While there was a brief surge in speculative digital art, Oraziak became convinced that real-world assets, particularly fine art, were a more meaningful use case for blockchain technology.
These discussions, coupled with my personal experiences as a collector and conversations with artists and galleries, revealed consistent issues. That was that Africa lacked the infrastructure for record-keeping, provenance, and market visibility.
By 2023, the Atur concept was born. After months of research, industry interviews, and market testing, Orajiaku and Umoh decided to officially launch the platform in May 2024, initially experimenting with a direct marketplace model, then focusing on validation and infrastructure in mid-2025.
Since relaunching its focused product, Atsur has verified more than 6,000 works of art, with a total value of more than $300,000 in archived works. Internal research databases compiled from archives, institutions, and collectors currently contain millions of data points that support provenance tracking across the ecosystem.
How Atsur works for artists, collectors, and organizations
Rather than listing works for public sale, Atsur acts as the backbone for verification and transactions.
For artists and galleries, the process begins with identity verification and physical verification of each work. Atsur verifies the creator’s credentials, inspects the work itself, and issues a digital certificate of authenticity. Once onboarded, your artwork enters Atsur’s tracking system.
If a collector wishes to purchase a verified work, they can complete the transaction using a private sales link generated on the platform. Title records are automatically updated with each sale and a new certificate is issued to the purchaser. Over time, a transparent history of all transfers will be built, eliminating common problems such as lost receipts, disputed authenticity, and fraud.
For existing collectors, Atur offers collection audit services. The company investigates old works, tracing previous ownership wherever possible, assessing current valuations, and ensuring documentation is complete. This not only improves the reliability of resale, but also allows artwork to be insured and passed on as a verifiable asset.
Behind the scenes, Atsur combines AI-powered data exploration with blockchain storage to preserve records forever while protecting the privacy of their owners.
business model
Atsur operates on a multi-stream revenue model centered around infrastructure services rather than direct sales of art.
Artists and galleries pay a fixed fee to verify each work and enter it into Atsur’s tracking system. A certificate of authenticity will then be issued.
In Nigeria, the current fee for each artwork is ₦75,000, which is designed to be accessible while still covering an intensive verification and documentation process.
While this creates predictable recurring revenue as more artwork enters the ecosystem and early-stage artists formally attribute the provenance of their work, it can still be costly for emerging artists with lower-priced works and requires continued market education on the value of verification.
For collectors with existing artwork, Atsur offers customized audit packages. Prices vary depending on the number of artworks, the age of each piece, whether there are existing records, and the level of historical research required.
The collection is stratified from less valuable pieces to more valuable legacy pieces.
Additionally, when a collector completes an artwork transfer using Atsur’s infrastructure, the company typically earns a fee of around 3%, and 5% for high-value transactions that require additional compliance checks.
Since July 2025, Atsur has operated primarily through bootstrapping and organic growth, generating over $7,000 in net revenue.
Competitive advantage and the future of Atur
According to Olaziak, Atour’s biggest advantage is its local presence in Africa.
While most global art acquisition companies focus on Western markets and high-value elite collections, Atour is actively building infrastructure across African cities, visiting archives, collectors’ homes, galleries, and institutions to collect data rarely accessed by international players.
Its verification system is also deliberately democratized. Unlike closed networks that only accept high-value artwork, Atsur allows emerging and mid-career artists to authenticate and track their work, opening up resale possibilities to the broader creative community.
This local-first, scalable model will allow Atsur to expand beyond Nigeria to other African markets where the arts ecosystem faces similar structural gaps.
In terms of growth, the startup remains bootstrapped, but has started raising a pre-seed round in Q1 2026. The company recently participated in the NBA Triple Double Accelerator, ranked in the top four out of over 700 applicants, and is currently participating in Carnegie Mellon’s incubation program.
With growing interest among collectors, institutions and artists, Atsur aims to turn artworks into traceable assets and become Africa’s core art infrastructure.
