Since its incorporation in 2020, AyaHQ has taken on a number of identities. Founded by Eric Annan, Pishikeni Tukura, and Dennis Ukonu, it has been a stablecoin funds product, a remote-jobs market, a coaching programme, a founder programme, and the operator of bodily residencies in two nations. It has additionally been, by its co-founder Annan’s personal admission, a firm that many individuals wrestle to put.
“A lot of people do not understand what we’re doing. In fact, we have people ask, ‘What exactly do you guys do? What exactly do you guys do?’ So, we are operating a black box which is not visible,” he advised TechCabal.
In latest years, AyaHQ has helped African founders construct firms, skilled software program engineers, product designers, and product managers, introduced entrepreneurs collectively in bodily residencies, and helped greater than 80 startups take form, based on the corporate.
However, in October 2026, AyaHQ closed its Kenyan residency in Kilifi. The 40-bed facility, designed to carry builders collectively, had run out of funding after almost two years of operations.
“The model worked. We built real founder infrastructure, drew serious builders, and showed what is possible on very little,” Annan mentioned.
Making the mannequin work and discovering the cash to maintain it working have proved to be two totally different challenges.
Day 1: A failed startup and the delivery of AyaHQ
Before AyaHQ, Annan advised TechCabal, he had tried to construct a startup with a staff unfold throughout totally different elements of the continent. He believed he had assembled the suitable technical expertise, imaginative and prescient, and abilities wanted to construct a firm, but the staff struggled to work collectively.
“I have previous experience of failing a startup that could have scaled, become a billion-dollar company, but it failed because there was zero empathy among the team,” he mentioned.
Annan in contrast constructing a startup to conducting an orchestra, the place totally different individuals have distinct duties however should work collectively to supply one thing coherent. He believed his earlier firm had the suitable particular person skills however lacked the cohesion wanted to make them operate as a staff.
The query that stayed with him was whether or not it was attainable to construct a platform that helped founders discover individuals who believed of their imaginative and prescient and had been keen to construct alongside them, whether or not or not the founder was technical. This turned the start line for AyaHQ.
AyaHQ was integrated in October 2020, though Annan says the precise work of constructing the corporate started in 2021.
Its first product was Aya.money, a stablecoin cost platform designed to assist African distant staff obtain and transfer cash throughout borders. Launched in 2021, it emerged because the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated distant work and opened up alternatives for African professionals to work with worldwide firms. According to Annan, whereas the pandemic created new alternatives, getting paid for worldwide jobs remained tough, as present cost techniques had been typically sluggish and costly.
Aya.money was constructed to handle that cost bottleneck utilizing stablecoins for peer-to-peer transfers. As the corporate labored on the product, nonetheless, the staff seen that African professionals had been struggling to realize visibility amongst worldwide employers.
“Aya.cash showed us that a faster payment is worth nothing if the person never wins the work that triggers it,” he mentioned. “The real problem was visibility and access: African talent was invisible to global employers.”
By May 2022, that realisation had pushed AyaHQ in a new path.
Day 500: From serving to job seekers to startup founders
Aya Gigs launched in May 2022, connecting African digital professionals throughout totally different disciplines with worldwide employers hiring remotely. By August of that yr, Annan famous that the initiative had linked greater than 100 African professionals to worldwide alternatives.
However, the success of Aya Gigs revealed yet one more downside. Although the expertise appeared good on paper, some struggled to fulfill the expectations of working in world groups, and demand for placements started to fall. Annan pointed to variations in communication as one instance. He recalled how a Ghanaian skilled’s repeated use of “please” when chatting with American colleagues may depart them questioning why each request wanted to be framed so politely.
“Employers judged how people communicated, collaborated, solved problems, and delivered inside distributed teams,” he mentioned. “This is not a skills deficit in African talent. There is a gap between how talent is usually trained and what modern collaborative workplaces demand. Access gets people in the door. Capability keeps them there.”
In September 2022, AyaHQ retired Aya Gigs as its core business, as the corporate determined to deal with creating the talents and dealing habits that may assist professionals thrive as soon as they bought worldwide alternatives.
AyaHQ acquired a grant from Coinbase, the US-based cryptocurrency change, which coated the funding for the pivot and AyaHQ’s first coaching programme. Annan defined that the he programme introduced software program builders, product designers and product managers into the identical room to learn to resolve issues and construct merchandise collectively.
He defined that the results of the programme started to alter how members noticed their prospects, as some had gone on to construct merchandise they wished to take to market.
“I can build my own company,” he mentioned, was the sentence that saved getting back from graduates of the programme. This would finally push AyaHQ to shift its ambition from making ready African professionals for jobs to supporting early-stage founders as they constructed firms.
“We moved from preparing people for jobs to building the environments where founders are made,” Annan mentioned.
Day 1000: The problem of conserving founder infrastructure alive
AyaHQ launched its founder programme in June 2023, specializing in serving to startup founders determine issues, assemble groups, develop merchandise, and construct ventures that would attain the market.
“Founders need more than business training, mentors, and capital. They need the right environment, complementary capability, relationships, and real practice,” Annan mentioned.
The programme is bodily by design. In May 2023, AyaHQ opened its first builder residency in Accra, Ghana. The 32-bed facility brings founders collectively to stay and work for intervals of as much as six weeks. The mannequin expanded in January 2025, when AyaHQ opened a second residency in Kilifi, Kenya. Across the 2 places, the corporate says it ran six formal residency cohorts with 250 founders throughout greater than 80 startups.
AyaHQ additionally experimented with what Annan calls a pop-up metropolis—a non permanent gathering the place builders from totally different places stay and work collectively, fostering collaboration past what a typical on-line programme presents.
Across its programmes and bodily areas, AyaHQ says it has engaged greater than 1,700 founders, builders, and ecosystem members from over 20 nations. Through its partnership with Lisk, a blockchain firm, AyaHQ additionally experiences distributing greater than $500,000 in grants to over 35 startups throughout greater than 25 nations.
AyaHQ’s business mannequin depends on establishments paying it to design and ship founder programmes. The firm additionally takes small fairness stakes in some taking part startups, permitting it to take care of an curiosity of their long-term improvement. However, following Lisk’s exit from the market in September, AyaHQ misplaced a main supply of assist and needed to rethink tips on how to finance its operations. The monetary strain turned acute in October 2026, when AyaHQ closed its Kilifi residency.
“We closed Kilifi in October 2026. Funding ran out, and we could not secure what it took to keep it running,” Annan mentioned.
Annan doesn’t describe the shutdown as a failure of the mannequin. The downside, he says, was that no one with a mandate to fund this work was funding it.
“A physical residency needs consistent backing, and we had almost none from institutions or government while working on youth employment, entrepreneurship, and innovation, the areas they are mandated to fund,” he mentioned.
The Accra facility stays open, working as a working hub fairly than a fixed-cohort programme—internet hosting founder residencies, collaborative constructing, coworking, builder gatherings, mentorship, staff retreats, and ecosystem engagements.
Annan sees three attainable paths ahead for AyaHQ: securing affected person capital that can provide the corporate a longer runway, working as a philanthropic social enterprise, or deepening its work with what he calls the ministries of digital economies throughout the continent. He argues that African ecosystems can not preserve ready for outdoor organisations to construct what native founders and establishments ought to be investing in themselves.
“Everybody who has supported our vision, our mission is somebody who is not African,” he mentioned. “We can’t continue to be begging our way out of poverty. We have to be intentional.”
Annan believes the continent wants many extra establishments centered on creating early-stage founders and giving them the assist to construct.
He describes AyaHQ’s journey as a steady line—starting with serving to African expertise receives a commission, shifting to offering entry to jobs and creating office capabilities, and now serving to these capabilities develop into firms.
“AyaHQ never changed its mission. Each product moved us closer to the real problem.”
