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ETHSafari 2025: Ubuntu Finance, and Africa’s Blockchain Future
Gerald Kombo
September 14, 2025
Ethereum marked its 10th anniversary, ETHSafari itself turned four, and across the program from coffee tokenization to zero-interest lending, DAOs, AI, and storytelling, the gathering reaffirmed Africa’s role in shaping the future of Web3.
Project Mocha: Coffee, Tokenization, and Real-World DeFi
A practical case study of how blockchain can transform agriculture. The model channels capital into farms in Kenya and Tanzania, enabling smallholder farmers to access financing and using blockchain to add transparency to the flow of funds.
The money goes to a farmer in Kenya or Tanzania. They use it to grow their produce, and when profits come in, they flow back to the investors. All of this is powered by Web3.
By linking coffee production with tokenization, Project Mocha demonstrates how African commodities can gain provenance and market access through digital tools, a concrete example of ETHSafari’s emphasis on practical solutions.
Storytelling as Infrastructure
Project building was reframed as storytelling. Builders were urged to treat their projects like protagonists in a narrative arc with highs, lows, and turning points, and to practice explaining their vision plainly and repeatedly.
Think of yourself as the author of your project. Without a compelling narrative, even the strongest technology risks being misunderstood or overlooked.
This emphasis on clear, human storytelling was presented as essential infrastructure for adoption and partnership.
Safari Tokens: Living Blockchain in Kilifi
ETHSafari 2025 embedded blockchain into daily life. Attendees used Safari tokens on wristbands to interact with vendors, illustrating microtransaction use cases in a real setting.
This is a real-life implementation of what blockchain can do, microtransactions powering unique experiences.
Breaking the VC Bias
The issue of investor bias was addressed directly.
Investors don’t necessarily buy into the business. They invest into what’s familiar, people with similar CVs, backgrounds, and exposure.
It was stressed that founders who are locally grounded but lack certain international exposures are often overlooked, and a redefinition of what is considered investable was called for.
Zero-Interest Lending and Ubuntu Economics
Alternative finance models were explored, focusing on zero-interest lending, guarantor systems, and community resource pooling.
If you’re getting a zero-interest loan or a very low-interest loan, and all you have to do is pay back in kind, that looks almost exactly like a salary advance. But it’s way better because you’re not in an employer-employee relationship anymore. You’re mutual service providers.
It was highlighted that trust is cheaper than trustlessness. When communities know one another, systems require less overhead. The discussion drew parallels with African mutual aid traditions such as burial societies, cooperative house-building, and rotating labor, proposing these as templates for protocol design.
The idea was captured in the philosophy of Ubuntu, Kukua mtu, to become a person through others.
To become a person, you’re together with other people. Ubuntu is about becoming a person in relationship. That’s the protocol we need to build.
Building Together: DAOs as Decentralized Agencies
DAOs were described as decentralized agencies and talent cooperatives where contributors can earn value and scale together.
Everyone has talent, the only problem is access.
If you’re building on Ethereum, you should be active within the DAO. Otherwise, you’re just waiting for improvements instead of shaping them yourself.
Tokenization and Uniqueness
Tokenization was explained using coffee as a metaphor for provenance.
It’s not the tree, it’s the location of the tree. Tokenization lets us assign uniqueness and value to assets through their context and origin.
This place-based framing emphasized how blockchain can preserve provenance and elevate African commodities.
AI Meets Blockchain
AI was a central theme. It was shown how AI’s strength in data and blockchain’s strength in transparency can complement one another, with use cases in finance, fraud prevention, and education.
AI with blockchain can improve verification and trust. Local datasets and lightweight models are needed to avoid bias and make AI useful in African contexts. Infrastructure gaps and unclear regulation remain constraints.
The Promise of ETHSafari
ETHSafari affirmed itself not only as a tech gathering but as a practical workshop for African Web3. It has become a place for first-time speakers, for tokenization experiments, for DAO governance learning, for rethinking finance through Ubuntu, and for storytelling that makes complex projects legible.
ETHSafari was the first time I spoke. The first time I built. Since then, I’ve blossomed. Let this be the story at the end of ETHSafari.