Nigeria’s first government backed NFT initiative, AFEN Group, which recently held one of the quickest public sales in the cryptocurrency space has raised over a million dollars in a token sales round. AFEN Group which was launched by Deborah Ojengbede, a 27-year old former banker, has become a leading hub for African blockchain-related collaborations with a focus on decentralized finance, arts, real estate, and education.
Since cryptocurrency and blockchain- the technology driving it- continue to garner more attention than ever before, it’s not out of place to see African women playing a dominant role in the sector, further demystifying blockchain and its impact on education, healthcare and trading, just to mention a few.
For Deborah, formerly a business analyst at Union Bank, her experiences coupled with a desire to explore the world of crypto enabled her to build an enterprise that would provide revolutionary services to its clients. Under Deborah’s leadership, AFEN aims to combine blockchain’s immutable data structure and the support of government bodies to legitimately offer products to its clients.
The Nigerian-based startup is on a mission to educate and expose more people to crypto and support careers in Blockchain technology. To achieve this, the company hopes to enroll newbies and startups to take up training on areas they are interested in.
It’s also set on a path to revolutionize the real estate industry by authenticating homeownership and making peer-to-peer property sales possible on the Blockchain, reducing the overall cost of acquiring property and making it easier to bequeath land after death.
According to its roadmap, AFEN Group plans to launch a product beta testing later in May as well as roll out its first batches of NFT sales in the same month.