Africa’s tech sector, which has produced over 7,000 startups in the last decade, has never lacked energy. What it often lacks is electricity, with only a handful surviving long enough to secure meaningful venture funding.
For years, ecosystems have been celebrated for hackathons, meetups and conferences, but when the lights go out — literally and figuratively — the momentum stalls. Behind every headline-grabbing raise lies a graveyard of ideas that never made it past pitch decks and demo days
Aya HQ, a Ghana- and Kenya-based Web3 talent hub, wants to change that survival rate. Branding itself a “No Bullshit Zone,” it provides the very foundation needed to get to the top: light, internet, and a place to build. Sometimes, that’s all a founder really needs to scale.
The Journey Before Aya HQ
Aya HQ’s founder, Eric Annan, did not arrive at this mission overnight. His journey into Web3 was impacted by both experiments and failures, including early ventures such as Digital Kudi and KibitX.
Over time, he collaborated with various innovators across Africa’s blockchain ecosystem, and shifted his focus to bridging the talent-trust gap.
These ventures gave him proximity to Africa’s earliest blockchain experiments, but not every idea survived. Shutting down his initial ventures was as much about recognising limits as it was about recalibrating ambition.
That willingness to restart laid the groundwork for Aya HQ, which he founded alongside Pishikeni Tukura, and Dennis Ukonu. Rather than build another startup chasing the next wave, Annan chose to build infrastructure — a hub that would give others the basic conditions he once lacked.
A Different Kind of Hub
Aya HQ has now supported over 35 startups across four cohorts, two run independently and two with partners. What makes the model different, Annan argues, are the intangible assets often ignored in conversations about African startups: trust, belief, confidence, and refusing to sell yourself short just because you’re African.
And when those cohorts graduate, Aya doesn’t just send them off, the hub continues to track and support its alumni, ensuring they have the tools, networks, and mentorship to scale and succeed.
He describes Aya HQ as a collective where founders are not competing for growth but are instead lifted by network effects. It is less about events and more about outcomes.
At a recent panel, the founder of Digipay captured this impact when he said that without Aya, his company wouldn’t exist. “Aya HQ gave me a home,” he stated. “We had light, internet, and everything needed for the business.” For Annan, that single line, more than any pitch deck, is the proof of concept.
Annan’s bet has always been that Africa’s sustainable growth lies not in waiting for outsiders, but in trusting its own builders. “We are waiting for people who do not look like us to help us,” he said during our conversation, shaking his head at the thought. Aya’s work is a rebuke to that dependence, a belief that talent here can build globally competitive products if given the right scaffolding.
Investors Are Paying Attention
Aya HQ is also attracting backers who once looked past Africa’s blockchain sector. Global chains like Lisk have funded its work, and conversations are underway with investors to raise around $10 million.
According to Annan, part of this will go into a $5 million microfund to back incubated startups, while the rest is earmarked for a special economic zone in Accra that will serve as both a founder campus and a live-in residency.
While the bigger investor community is beginning to view Aya HQ as a bet with returns, Annan points out that Y Combinator recovered its entire investment in African startups from just one exit. For him, that statistic is evidence that value already exists here, it simply needs better pipelines.
Aya’s role, he says, is to prepare founders and developers to meet global demand without waiting for validation from abroad.
Just two years ago, Annan says he was questioned about Aya HQ’s direction, “‘What is Aya doing?’ ‘We don’t know actually what Aya is doing.’”
Now, those same voices are coming back to ask how they can help. “What excites me the most is being stubborn on the Aya mission,” he said. “We have had a plan since 2017, and waking up every day I begin to see that mission becoming clear.”
For him, leadership isn’t about cleverness or charisma. It’s about patience and faith, creating space for founders to fail, learn, and try again. That is why he takes pride not just in success stories, but in the quiet transformations he sees daily: entrepreneurs whose mindsets, and sometimes lives, have changed within eight months of joining Aya’s programmes.
This stubbornness, to hold ground until others catch up, may well be Aya HQ’s greatest asset. It is building what Eric calls the “plumbing” of Africa’s Web3 ecosystem: reliable infrastructure, credible founders, investable startups. It is not the loudest model, but it may be the most durable.
Aya’s story is still unfolding, but the takeaway so far is that survival in Africa’s startup sector requires more than a drive. It needs power, patience, and places like Aya HQ, where light shines on, and founders finally get to build.
The hub is still young, and scaling remains one of Annan’s greatest challenges. Should Aya HQ go deeper in Ghana, or expand into Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town? Yes, with the goal to build an African pipeline that doesn’t just feed into global markets but competes with them.
For Annan, however, the real fulfilment is not expansion for its own sake but impact on the ground. “Working out and seeing people talk about what Aya is doing, how their life has changed by connecting with Aya… it’s more than inspiring for me and that’s what gave me fulfilment. The money for me, it’s just a plus.”
Aya HQ may not yet rival Silicon Valley in capital, but in resilience, community, and conviction, it is already setting a standard.
