Why are you participating for Based Africa?

I had a conversation with a struggling single mom prior to finding this idea and that conversation made me realize that there are many small business owners in Nigeria facing greater struggles of managing their finances and scaling due to the complicated government regulations and limited access opportunities for growth. By introducing them to Base platform, we are helping to bridge the gap between traditional financial systems and the opportunities offered by coming onchain. Our goal is to empower them with the tools that make growing and scaling simpler and more sustainable.

What challenges are you focusing on?

With the help of Base, we're focusing on two key challenges: financial inclusion and ease of transactions for small businesses in a way that ensures scalability. Many local vendors struggle with savings, loans and accessing digital payment methods, while students with side hustles need simple, secure ways to manage their income and make their money work for them. Base helps by offering an accessible platform for secure savings, transactions, and digital payments. Our goal is to empower these groups by allowing them tell their story, onboarding them to base and helping them understand the opportunities available on Base to grow their businesses and manage their finances more effectively.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Our project tackles financial barriers in Nigeria by introducing small business owners and students to Base platform so as to empower these groups by allowing them tell their story, onboarding them to base and helping them understand the opportunities available on Base to grow their businesses and manage their finances more effectively. We show market vendors how Base can simplify their savings and payments, making their financial transactions more secure and every way being onchain is better than not. For students with side hustles, we open Base accounts, provide Base names, introduce them to empowering platforms onchain, giving them a digital solution for managing their earnings. This initiative promotes financial inclusion by offering a more accessible and efficient way to save, make payments, and grow small businesses within our community. In the coming months, we intend to reach more local markets in Nigeria and bring more business owners onchain with a projection of 15% of people in each local market we reach.

Challenges we ran into

1. Finding business owners to interview was a big problem so we just played a game of numbers and asked and asked till we found willing merchants. We made a promise to ourselves within the team to reach out to them once the buildathon is over and help highlight their business as further as we can.

2. The weather wasn't favourable so the only way around this was to sit it out

3. Coinbase smart wallet can't work in Nigeria without VPN so had to let them know about this issue and downloaded a free VPN they could use alongside their new wallet.

4. At the market we had a lot of interruptions from local thugs who claimed to be law enforcement "Don't bring out camera here", "Dont shoot there" e.t.c. We had to amicably explain to them what we were doing wasn't only harmless but beneficial and also tip where words couldn't fix the situation.

Additional Features

The idea was birther before the buildathon but was fully executed during the buildathon.