Ejara Partners With Starknet Foundation to Pioneer Next Generation DeFi Infrastructure in Africa

The Starknet Foundation, the nonprofit organisation supporting the growth and adoption Starknet’s L2 network on Ethereum, is excited to announce its strategic partnership with Ejara, the leading pan-African savings and investment platform, to bring scalable, user-centric decentralized finance (DeFi) to underserved communities across Africa.

The collaboration between Starknet Foundation and Ejara is grounded in a shared vision of using blockchain to democratise access to secure, transparent financial tools for millions of people traditionally excluded from formal finance. As part of the partnership, Ejara has received a technology grant from the Starknet Foundation to accelerate development on next-generation savings products, including the infrastructure required to onboard real-world assets (RWA) and support tokenized financial instruments.

Ejara’s mission is to build a digital finance platform rooted in African realities, combining traditional savings products with crypto-native investment tools. By integrating Starknet’s high-throughput, low-cost Layer 2 technology, Ejara can reduce transaction costs, improve user experience, and bring DeFi tools closer to mass-market adoption.

Highlights of the partnership include:

• Scalable infrastructure for inclusive finance: Leveraging Starknet’s zk-rollup architecture to deliver cost-effective blockchain access across low-bandwidth, mobile-first markets.
  
• Retail-first strategy: Focused on creating accessible savings and investment tools for individuals, not institutions.
  
• Validator ecosystem participation: Ejara will play an active technical role in Starknet’s decentralization efforts, including plans to participate as a validator.
  
• Future product development: Support for tokenized bonds, savings accounts, and real-world asset onboarding is underway – with more to come in future announcements.

Nelly Chatue-Diop, CEO of Ejara, says: “We are thrilled to join forces with the Starknet Foundation, a team that shares our commitment to meaningful and long-term change. Our goal is not just to launch new products, but to build infrastructure that enables true financial sovereignty for our users. Together with Starknet, we’re laying the foundation for a new era of finance in Africa – inclusive, affordable, and resilient.”

James Strudwick, Executive Director, The Starknet Foundation, says: “Partnerships like this are exactly how Starknet expands from code to community. Ejara is deeply embedded in the realities of financial life in Africa. Backing builders like Nelly and her team is how we bring powerful, permissionless infrastructure to life – not just for developers, but for everyday people.”

With over hundreds of thousands of users across Francophone Africa and the diaspora, Ejara is one of the most widely adopted blockchain-based savings apps on the continent. The company’s traction reflects growing demand for financial tools that are decentralized, compliant, and built for real-world use cases.

As blockchain regulation and stablecoin adoption accelerate globally, the Starknet Foundation sees Africa and other Global Majority regions as key proving grounds for permissionless finance. Ejara’s partnership brings this vision to life by building DeFi infrastructure grounded in financial inclusion and product-market fit.