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.

Aya provides a platform where the African workforce can work with organisations that know the worth of their skills and talents. It has achieved tremendous success by not only connecting talent and organisations, but by bridging the trust between them.

“We want to unleash the resilience and resourcefulness of Africans to the world. And we are leveraging innovative technology to build tools that will enable African talent to be connected to the global marketplace,” says Eric Annan, founder, and CEO of Aya. 

Aya assesses the needs of an organisation very carefully by understanding its vision and desired outcomes and discussing these with the founders and executive team. Pishikeni Tukura, the co-founder of Aya, says this has been instrumental to the company’s strong growth trajectory.

“We are looking to redefine how talent is matched to startups,” he says. “This is why we go into a startup and talk to the founders, get to know them and their vision, and assess their needs.” We know what they need as we are founders ourselves. With our A.I. tools, we are able to discover the right people for these organizations that we believe will propel them further into their vision and success. “

The workforce can truly live borderless by opening up the blockchain and crypto to Africans.

“Aya provides an opportunity to do jobs you actually enjoy while increasing your capacity to earn beyond your physical borders,” says Annan. “It also gives businesses the opportunity to access the finest talents available, vetted and trusted to get the job done. In this way, we take the pressure off founders and executives. “

While, to this date, the company has linked talent to organisations spanning three different continents, it now wants to go beyond just finding talent but nurturing it. 

“There’s no shortage of talent in the world, but there is a shortage of talent with the right mindset to suit the company they are working for.” Especially when it comes to startups, which is where we are focusing. We want to do much more than just create a hiring platform like Upwork or a cryptocurrency wallet,” says Annan. “This kind of arrangement needs training, education, and mentoring.”

To fund this new training, Aya sent a proposal to Coinbase Giving. The feedback from Coinbase Giving was overwhelmingly positive, says Annan.

“They felt it was an inspiring and futuristic approach to talent,” he says. “With the funds, we are looking to pilot a training program with 50 people, and then build an education tool into the Aya system and also convert our existing talent,”

Tukura says that whether people have ten years of experience or just one year of experience, Aya wants to be able to give them what they need to join a startup strategically and execute the vision.

“This is not just a tool to get people hired, it’s a tool that grows companies—and opens up more opportunities. If we can be at the forefront of a new economic movement, we will be happy,” he says.

Interested applicants can register to participate in the program by filling out their details in the attached form. Successful applicants will undergo a rigorous vetting process as we aim to work with top early-stage African talent who are passionate. The program is set to begin at the end of September, 2022.

Ayagigs can be accessed at https://beta.ayagigs.com and you can sign up either as a business to get access to vetted African talent or as a freelancer to access global opportunities. Join the Aya community to get the latest updates on our progress.