For this month's project review, we are featuring Jambo, one of our portfolio companies currently aiming to build the Web3 Superapp of Africa to onboard the next generation of young Africans to the crypto space. We will share more background information on the project, a market analysis on web3 in Africa, and our thesis behind why we like this project and where we see growth potential.
What is Jambo?
Jambo is a new superapp focused on bringing web3 to African markets with a mission to onboard the next billion African users to the global crypto ecosystem. Jambo’s founding team includes African natives who have deep knowledge and expertise in the crypto market in Africa. James Zhang, the company’s CEO, is a serial entrepreneur from the Democratic Republic of Congo who has been active in crypto communities since 2015.
The team has also built up an impressive list of advisors, with Sandeep Nailwal, Santiago Roel Santos, Piers Kicks, Joe McCann, Jordan Momtazi, Will Robinson, Qiao Wang, Colleen Sullivan, and Ryan Selkis all on board.
Jambo's vision is to leverage web3 to build the bridge between Africa and the rest of the world and launch games and applications. In doing so, Jambo contributes to widespread web3 adoption across Africa, ultimately aiming to impact the lives of millions.
Shortly after Jambo's inception, the project successfully raised $30M in its Series A Round led by Paradigm and various institutional investors including Parafi, Pantera, Delphi Ventures, Polygon Studios, Morningstar Ventures, and more. The Series A followed Jambo's $7.5M seed round from investors, including Coinbase Ventures and Tiger Global.
Current Crypto Adoption In Africa
Undoubtedly, Africa is one of the world's most rapidly growing emerging markets. Just in the last year, cryptocurrency adoption increased by 1,200%, driven by increased retail use for savings and peer-to-peer transactions, more web3 start-ups, and interest from global institutional investors. The 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index placed Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco in the top 20 countries in overall crypto adoption.
With 80% of the African population unbanked, meaning people don’t have a bank account or the means to open one, cryptocurrencies' decentralized and relatively secure nature is highly attractive to individuals in these regions. Africans have also received over $100B worth of crypto payments from July 2020 to June 2021. In Sub-Saharan Africa, retail transactions under $1,000 make up 80% of all transfers, powering crypto markets in Africa and enabling Africans to pay for their basic needs without having a bank account.
Notable names such as Binance, Circle, and Polygon have also shown immense interest in Africa through education and accelerator programs creating opportunities for local developers and builders looking to start up in the web3 space.
Jambo's Mission to Educate and Onboard the Next Million African Users
Africa is the continent with the youngest demographic globally, with over 60% of the population under the age of 25. Jambo is spearheading the initiative to create an African web3 portal through a highly specialized and localized pan-African boots-on-the-ground campaign, empowering this population with global opportunities. Jambo’s premiere product is JamboAcademy, Africa’s first 10-week structured learn-to-earn program to educate the average African on the advantages and opportunities presented by web3 and blockchain.
Jambo launched in November 2021 and has already made substantial progress across Africa. So far, Jambo has already gathered a 100-member team across 19 countries at the moment including Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.
The Jambo Superapp
There’s already a strong appetite for web3 in Africa, so it’s only natural that crypto will continue to expand within these nations in the form of a fuller web3 experience. This is exactly what Jambo is providing: a “superapp” with everything a user new to cryptocurrency would need to become integrated into web3.
These features together will make up the Jambo ecosystem and will facilitate the user experience of onboarding into web3. The first offering the team is planning to launch is JamboAcademy. JamboAcademy will construct an extensive network of ambassadors – one city at a time – with a goal of building stronger communities all over Africa. Through these communities, Jambo aims to establish a prominent presence in major population centers to subsequently help expand its reach out to smaller ones. More importantly, with Jambo’s rapidly expanding presence as well as fundamental understanding of cultural nuances, JamboAcademy is has developed a 10-week learn to earn web3 curriculum that is both geared towards the younger population and tailored for local cultures.
Our analysis
After a successful funding round and establishing a strong presence in the web3 space in Africa, the Jambo team has shown outstanding work so far. We enjoy working with them and look forward to the upcoming launch of the Jambo SuperApp. Diving a bit deeper into the project, here are some thoughts on what makes Jambo a dynamic project.
Why Jambo is a notable project:
- Jambo aims to fill the gap in the availability of financial services for African people. Right now, only 20% of Africans have access to financial products such as lending and borrowing. Jambo’s SuperApp and educational efforts will provide the knowledge people need to understand how to buy crypto and NFTs and build on web3.
- Jambo has a considerable socio-economic impact in helping millions of people become financially literate and pulling many out of poverty into financial prosperity.
- Jambo strongly focuses on education, an essential topic in the ecosystem. Pioneering as the first SuperApp and setting out to become the most prominent African player in the web3 space, they can tap into an immense market opportunity, which can spearhead and inspire many other start-ups to follow in their footsteps.
With any emerging market, there is an opportunity but also some space for growth. Currently, Africa still needs to gain the technical talent who carries knowledge to develop apps or products built on blockchain technology. For this, many companies, specifically in blockchain and the web3 space, are trying to fill this gap with either education programs or consultancy work to help developers gain knowledge in the field.
What's next for Jambo?
As web3 explodes in Africa, Jambo is poised to be the all-in-one premier app for earning, trading, and learning about everything blockchain related. Their product suite of blockchain offerings paired with technical education content will be a formidable combination in their go-to-market strategy. Furthermore, investing in digital tokens will allow African citizens to have a new degree of financial autonomy that was previously unavailable.
We are always inspired by projects like Jambo, which look to solve significant socio-economic issues. Thank you to the enthusiastic and driven team for all your dedication and hard work so far, and we are looking forward to building the future of web3 in Africa together.
Learn more about Jambo and make sure to follow them on their socials here:
