Juicyway pitches connected capital markets to finance African growth

Juicyway, a cross-border payments company, is building a platform connecting African assets with global investors, its founder and chief executive, Ife Johnson, said, arguing that faster payments alone cannot solve the continent’s financing problem.

Speaking at Moonshot by TechCabal in Lagos, Johnson outlined plans for the ‘People’s Exchange’, which would use tokenisation, creating blockchain-based records of assets and securities, to help businesses raise money across markets. Johnson said Juicyway has received approval in principle from Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to build the exchange.

“We’ve produced category winners without producing enough shared infrastructure for entire categories to grow,” he said. “Africa needs more shared infrastructure and fewer isolated winners.”

Juicyway deals with this every day. Software can send a payment instruction in seconds, but the money to complete that payment still has to be sitting in the right currency, in the right country.

“For roughly 95% of the transactions that we have to carry out, we have to perform settlements,” Johnson said. The exchange’s first focus would be financing that liquidity, he said, with later uses in mortgages, trade receivables, energy, commodities and stakes in private companies.

His argument is that the same shortage runs through the wider economy, as businesses hold receivables, projects need investment and households need long-term loans, but the capital to fund them is split across dozens of small markets.

Africa’s unmet demand for trade finance was between $74 billion and $92 billion in 2024, according to the African Development Bank’s 2025 trade finance report. African companies raised about $220 billion in equity on local stock markets between 2000 and 2024, just 1% of the equity raised worldwide, according to the OECD’s Africa Capital Markets Report 2025.

Johnson proposed tokenising investments to structure them, record who owns them and sell them across borders, with stablecoins moving and settling the money. “I don’t think Africa needs 29 exchanges,” he said. “I think it needs one market that connects them all.”

The aim is to let African businesses reach investors beyond their home markets. Making that work will take more than a shared technology platform: investors will need confidence in the underlying assets, in their ownership rights, and in how they get repaid or sell their stakes.

Johnson framed the exchange as a long-term project, citing his son. “I want his generation to inherit markets that finance the ambitions, rather than ambitions constrained by the absence of markets,” he said.

Lagos’s National Theatre, now the Wole Soyinka Centre for Arts & Culture, a brutalist landmark whose shape mimics a general’s cap, from October 27-29, played host to a different kind of uniform.

The attendees at Moonshot by TechCabal were not, on the whole, wearing the hoodies, fleece vests, T-shirts, and jeans combinations that Silicon Valley has exported to the world. Most people were dressed to be seen.

There was a richness to the dressing that felt entirely at home in a West African fashion capital. Boldly patterned shirts, flowing matching sets and colourful fabrics brought texture and brightness to the various rooms and exhibition halls.

The appeal lay in the freedom with which guests put it all together. West African fashion influences sat comfortably alongside contemporary tailoring, sculptural dresses and easy separates. Styles could be practical, exuberant and polished within the same outfit.

More importantly, there was a sense of occasion. People dressed for the pleasure of gathering, making an entrance and meeting one another. In the pictures that follow, that pleasure is everywhere.