Juicyway, a cross-border payments company, is constructing a platform connecting African belongings with international buyers, its founder and chief govt, Ife Johnson, mentioned, arguing that quicker funds alone can’t clear up the continent’s financing downside.
Speaking at Moonshot by TechCabal in Lagos, Johnson outlined plans for the ‘People’s Exchange’, which might use tokenisation, creating blockchain-based data of belongings and securities, to assist companies elevate cash throughout markets. Johnson mentioned Juicyway has acquired approval in precept from Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to construct the exchange.
“We’ve produced category winners without producing enough shared infrastructure for entire categories to grow,” he mentioned. “Africa needs more shared infrastructure and fewer isolated winners.”
Juicyway offers with this every single day. Software can ship a fee instruction in seconds, however the cash to finish that fee nonetheless needs to be sitting in the best forex, in the best nation.
“For roughly 95% of the transactions that we have to carry out, we have to perform settlements,” Johnson mentioned. The exchange’s first focus could be financing that liquidity, he mentioned, with later makes use of in mortgages, commerce receivables, power, commodities and stakes in non-public firms.
His argument is that the identical scarcity runs via the broader financial system, as companies maintain receivables, initiatives want funding and households want long-term loans, however the capital to fund them is cut up throughout dozens of small markets.
Africa’s unmet demand for commerce finance was between $74 billion and $92 billion in 2024, based on the African Development Bank’s 2025 trade finance report. African firms raised about $220 billion in fairness on native inventory markets between 2000 and 2024, simply 1% of the fairness raised worldwide, based on the OECD’s Africa Capital Markets Report 2025.
Johnson proposed tokenising investments to construction them, file who owns them and promote them throughout borders, with stablecoins transferring and settling the cash. “I don’t think Africa needs 29 exchanges,” he mentioned. “I think it needs one market that connects them all.”
The intention is to let African companies attain buyers past their house markets. Making that work will take greater than a shared expertise platform: buyers will want confidence within the underlying belongings, of their possession rights, and in how they get repaid or promote their stakes.
Johnson framed the exchange as a long-term venture, citing his son. “I want his generation to inherit markets that finance the ambitions, rather than ambitions constrained by the absence of markets,” he mentioned.
