Juicyway, a cross-border payments company, is constructing a platform connecting African property with international traders, its founder and chief govt, Ife Johnson, mentioned, arguing that sooner funds alone can not 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 information of property and securities, to assist companies elevate cash throughout markets. Johnson mentioned Juicyway has obtained 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 day by day. Software can ship a cost instruction in seconds, however the cash to finish that cost nonetheless must be sitting in the proper forex, in the proper 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 personal firms.
His argument is that the identical scarcity runs by the broader economic system, as companies maintain receivables, initiatives want funding and households want long-term loans, however the capital to fund them is break up throughout dozens of small markets.
Africa’s unmet demand for commerce finance was between $74 billion and $92 billion in 2024, in line with 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, in line with 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 shifting 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 goal is to let African companies attain traders past their dwelling markets. Making that work will take greater than a shared know-how platform: traders will want confidence within the underlying property, of their possession rights, and in how they get repaid or promote their stakes.
Johnson framed the exchange as a long-term challenge, 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.
