The ceremony, held on Friday, November 21, in Lagos, brought together investors, industry leaders, media, and entrepreneurs to celebrate startups enhancing local industries and strengthening Africa’s footprint in global commerce. 

The winners, Dingpay, Aquatrack, and Growwr, were presented with cash prizes ranging from $2,000 to $10,000, alongside access to international suppliers and the infrastructure to scale beyond local markets.

Dingpay, a fintech innovator creating an “offline-first” digital wallet that consolidates bank cards, identity documents, tickets, and payments, claimed the $10,000 grand prize. 

Speaking on the win, co-founder Itohowo Udofia said, “We are honoured to be recognised as the winner of the Verto Award. This prize will enable us to scale faster, strengthen our operations, and unlock new market opportunities. It’s an incredible validation of our work, and we’re excited for what comes next.”

Aquatrack, an agritech startup providing AI-driven farm management tools for fish farmers, and Growwr, a platform enabling businesses to hire, manage, and pay pre-verified African tech talent efficiently, also walked away with commendable support to boost their growth.

The Verto Awards 2025 selection process, rigorous and thorough, involved a panel of distinguished judges assessing each startup’s innovation, scalability, feasibility, and potential market impact. 

The judging panel included Dotun Adekunle, COO/CTO of OPay; Ime Enang, CEO of The Conversationalist Limited; Omotayo Idowu, group head, Commerce & SME of Providus Bank; Soibi Ovia, partner at DAO Law; and Austin Okpagu, country manager, Verto Nigeria.

Ola Oyetayo, Verto’s co-founder and CEO, commented on the initiative: “This inaugural edition of the Verto Award has revealed just how much innovation, resilience, and global ambition exist within Africa’s early-stage startup ecosystem. 

“The calibre of founders we’ve seen this year has been exceptional. As these businesses grow, expand, and strengthen international ties, we remain committed to providing the financial infrastructure that helps turn their global ambitions into reality.”

Since its launch in February 2025, the Verto Award has aimed to spotlight startups with sector-agnostic potential, supporting them both financially and in gaining visibility, as well as granting access to the tools needed for cross-border growth.

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.