Cardashift: an ecosystem-based approach for tuning into on the ground realities

Thorough knowledge of user needs is the starting point for Cardashift’s method.

4 min readJan 25, 2022

Strategy: Developing a network of local partners

Cardashift is collaborating with local partners to factor in the diverse experiences of communities on the frontlines of climate change.

Government agencies, international organisations, as well as NGOs and charities, embodying a sense of solidarity within civil society, are all working very closely with these communities, as are incubators and accelerators. The latter group are striving to get solutions put forward by entrepreneurs to achieve take off. From their vantage point, these communities are users with needs to be met.

It’s up to us to harness the power of collective intelligence, converting it into an effective network for:

Conducting field studies
Making a diagnosis
Identifying the entrepreneurs
Bringing local investors on board
Shoring up our support programme
Monitoring solution deployment
Measuring impact

Announcing our partnership with EIC Corporation

Our partnership with the EIC Corporation embodies this cooperative spirit, which is one of Cardashift’s core values.

Achille Agbe, founder and NED Chairman of EIC, is emblematic of this dual-culture generation: both African and Western, determined to harness the extraordinary potential of the people in Africa’s 54 States to turn the continent into the laboratory of the future. Africa is free from environmental debt. It has the world’s youngest population, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit, a corollary of the need to survive. Africa is buzzing, just like China was when it began its rise.

Throughout 14 years of its painstaking work, EIC had brought people together around an idea which is not just high-minded, but also rational: the economic emancipation of the most vulnerable will make our nations stronger. It is up to us to reach out to communities, to raise awareness, to educate and support them. This is necessary for the world’s poorest to be able to get access to financial services (bank accounts, loans, insurance etc.), as well as to reduce the size of the informal economy.

300 hundred clubs have been set up in over 50 countries, each one working at its own level to foster the financial empowerment of people locked into poverty. Now Achille and his multicultural, multidisciplinary competency network are going to seek out youth and communities ever further afield: they’re launching a caravan which will criss-cross a range of countries in EIC Corporation’s network (Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DRC, Morocco, France, Chad, Madagascar…).

Our fieldwork is conducted in close cooperation with local communities. This means we can take the full measure of a given community’s situation before we come up with the appropriate answers. This is what our partnership is all about: sharing the work; maintaining an on the ground presence to understand the specific problems communities are facing; working hand in hand with entrepreneurs to build robust companies delivering tailored solutions.

From Nairobi to Abidjan, the blockchain ecosystem is booming, offering us a glimpse of Africa as the promised land of blockchain. In Ethiopia, IOHK is helping 5 million school children (IDs, tracking student performance, certification etc.) using Cardano-based service infrastructure. Cardashift is pleased to be able to count on Africa’s blockchain pioneers. They’ve taken on the task of raising public awareness about the life-changing virtues of decentralisation-driven breakthrough innovation in their home countries.

We could already thank the West Africa Decentralized Alliance, in Accra, the Blockchain Association of Burkina, in Ouagadougou, or the Blockchain Association of Cameroun, in Yaoundé, our first partners to detect and develop the future DeFi nuggets in Africa with a worldwide ambition.

Objective: enhancing the fabric of innovation

Cardashift brings crypto funds, acceleration support, and technical infrastructure to the table. These are seen as answer to the vulnerabilities of the economic fabric of innovation:

Entrepreneurial risk

Quitting your job to set up your own business in a sluggish youth labour market is risky. This acts as a serious brake on entrepreneurial initiative. Cardashift is covering the support costs for companies selected to be pitched to investors.

Support

In Africa, like elsewhere, a company’s success hinges on the quality of the entrepreneurs who stand behind it, as well as on whether they’re able to hone their CEO competencies.

Cardashift gets investors to cover the cost of post-fundraising support, thereby encouraging business acceleration.

Fundraising and seed capital

Investment funds are all in agreement: there’s a dearth of robust projects out there. Cardashift is counting on the risk culture of crypto economy players to help bridge this gap, fostering the rise of a generation of African entrepreneurs and impact investors.

Access to technology

Restricted access to proprietary digital technologies inhibits application development. That’s why the launchpad, the selection frameworks, as well as the DeFi services designed and developed by Cardashift will all be common goods.

Competency ecosystems

Entrepreneurs often struggle to surround themselves with the operational competencies required to grow their teams.
Cardashift is working with its partners to devise new solutions, both financing and incentive-based, to encourage the development of competency ecosystems.

About Cardashift

Cardashift is a community-run launchpad that raises funds, builds and accelerates startups that are solving social and environmental issues.

Cardashift is based on Cardano, the blockchain platform for change-makers, innovators, and visionaries.

Written by Tangui Friant, Co-founder & Chief Partnerships Officer