October 27, 2025
How this Kenyan software program engineer is reworking blockchain infrastructure throughout Africa.
Meet David Makuku Nandwa, founder and CTO of Honeycoin, a fast-growing fintech platform bridging conventional finance and blockchain infrastructure throughout Africa.
Nandwa based Honeycoin in 2020 after a irritating expertise as a younger Nairobi-based software program engineer. When he obtained a $5,000 fee for freelance work via PayPal, the platform froze his funds for 3 months, labeling his nation a high-risk jurisdiction. The then-19-year-old turned that setback into motivation, channeling his frustration into launching his fintech startup throughout the top of the pandemic.
“It was a wake-up name,” Nandwa informed Enterprise Insider Africa. “Right here I used to be, a developer constructing world techniques, and I couldn’t entry my very own cash. I realised Africans weren’t simply excluded from alternatives, we have been excluded from entry. And I had the talents to do one thing about it.”
Since its launch, Honeycoin has skilled fast progress, now dealing with over $150 million in month-to-month transactions throughout 40 markets and redefining how Africans ship, obtain, and handle cash. Backed by partnerships with Tether, Binance, and others, the platform goals to achieve $1 billion in month-to-month transaction quantity inside the subsequent six months.
“It’s about giving companies and other people monetary management,” Nandwa stated.
With a robust basis in software program, sparked by a ardour for gaming and steering from his father, an engineer, Nandwa constructed and exited two startups earlier than founding Honeycoin. One in all these ventures, an e-commerce platform in Dar es Salaam, grew to just about $1 million in annual income earlier than being acquired by Zapata. He then spent two years at Flutterwave, the African funds unicorn, the place he gained hands-on expertise growing integrations and constructing fee rails throughout the continent, information that will lay the groundwork for Honeycoin.
“Flutterwave was my classroom,” Nandwa stated. “I noticed how arduous it’s to scale monetary infrastructure in Africa, how a lot you depend upon third-party techniques that may fail at any time.”
Throughout his time at Flutterwave, Nandwa acknowledged a crucial subject: treasury and liquidity techniques in rising markets relied on fragmented and unreliable infrastructure. He realized the answer required a essentially completely different method, constructing on blockchain rails designed for velocity, resilience, and world accessibility.
At the moment, Honeycoin features because the working system for cash in rising markets, providing a unified platform the place companies can subject stablecoin wallets, entry banking infrastructure, ship playing cards, and hook up with world blockchain fee rails via easy-to-use APIs.
“Africa’s monetary techniques have been constructed on imported infrastructure, SWIFT, Visa, PayPal, usually inaccessible or unreliable,” Nandwa stated. “Honeycoin’s mannequin flips that. By merging stablecoins, blockchain, and conventional rails, we provide a resilient various that works whether or not banks are on-line or not.”
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