Hashgraph Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Abu Dhabi, has pledged $1 million to the next Hedera Africa Hackathon, adding fresh backing to one of the continent’s largest Web3 focused developer programmes.
The pledge comes through the wider Hedera ecosystem. Hashgraph Ventures, part of the Hashgraph Association, is a Swiss non profit that supports training, certification, and innovation programmes for Hedera powered solutions. The firm said it backs early stage ventures and projects building real world tools and solutions across blockchain, artificial intelligence, and deep technology.
Additionally, organisers said the new commitment takes equity investment commitments tied to the hackathon to $2 million, following participation from United Gulf Financial Services (UGFS). Alongside, they also stated that the next edition will run with a $1 million prize pool, contributed by The Hashgraph Association and the Exponential Science Foundation.
By way of background, the first Hedera Africa Hackathon ran between August and October last year, using a hybrid format across more than 20 African cities. Organisers said it drew 13,000 developers and produced 1,300 project submissions.
During the programme, teams built Hedera powered concepts across sectors including finance, healthcare, telecoms, sustainability, agriculture, and manufacturing, with attention on how AI can work with areas like IoT, robotics, and quantum computing.
Commenting on the pledge, Kamal Youssefi, president of The Hashgraph Association, said the commitment reflects support for scalable adoption of distributed ledger technology, and follows what he described as strong outcomes from the earlier programme.