United Gulf Financial Services Joins The Hashgraph Association and Exponential Science Foundation Adding $1M to Hedera Africa Hackathon Pool Prize

United Gulf Financial Services (UGFS North Africa), a leading venture capital firm offering innovative companies and startups with financial support and mentoring services, has announced a partnership with The Hashgraph Association, a Swiss non-profit organization driving global adoption of Hedera-powered solutions by funding innovation, training, certification, and venture building programs, and Exponential Science Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation accelerating responsible tech adoption, via research, education, and innovation activities, for Hedera Africa Hackathon 2025, the biggest hackathon in Africa aimed at enabling the next generation of Web developers and empower economic inclusion in Africa with a digital future for all.

UGFS North Africa is allocating $1 million from its managed Funds and funding partners to invest in winning startups and projects who have participated in the Hedera Africa Hackathon.

The Hedera Africa Hackathon is the biggest Web3 Hackathon initiative combining online participation with onsite events in over 20 African cities. The goal is to attract over 10,000 participants across more than 15 countries on the African continent.

Developers, students, and entrepreneurs in Africa and globally will collaborate to build decentralized solutions on Hedera across industries such as Finance, Healthcare, Telecoms, Sustainability, Agriculture, and Manufacturing, while leveraging the convergence of other deep technologies such as AI, IoT, Robotics, and Quantum Computing.

Mohamed Salah Frad, Managing Director, UGFS (North Africa) stated, “We are very pleased to be participating in the Hedera Africa Hackathon as this is core to our strategy which is to invest and help grow innovation across Africa. We trust that the hackathon will bring talented teams and projects to the areas of AI, Greentech, Biotech and more. Working with partners such as the Hashgraph Association and Exponential Science Foundation is essential as we believe collaboration is key.”

The hackathon went live on August 1^st, 2025, and will continue up to September 30^th, 2025. The hackathon tasks applicants to develop blockchain/distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based, scalable solutions tailored to the continent’s most urgent challenges and needs. All solutions will be built on the Hedera network – the world’s most energy-efficient and cost-effective DLT, which offers cost predictability, the highest levels of security, and the ability to support reliable, scalable, and enterprise-grade applications.

Kamal Youssefi, President of The Hashgraph Association, explained, “We are proud to have among our partners for the hackathon strong players from various industries, such as UDFS, Orange Africa and Middle East, Exponential Science and others. Our efforts to equip developers and entrepreneurs with Web3 skills using Hedera platform, and funding to support digitization in Africa, cannot be done solo, but through a consorted effort such as this one. Increasing the pool prize from $1 million to $2 million will attract more innovative developers and projects and help us to digitize the African continent.”

Paolo Tasca, Executive Chairman of Exponential Science Foundation, added, “Exponential Science has partnered with the Hedera Africa Hackathon because we believe in the strong potential within the continent for the development of emerging technologies. A larger pool prize will encourage more developers, projects, and entrepreneurs to join the initiative to develop their ideas into ventures that will benefit the region.”

The Hedera Africa Hackathon 2025 is operated and supported by a strong network of partners, under the experienced leadership of DAR Blockchain, a Tunisian-based Web3 Hub that has been operating in the Web3 industry since 2017. DAR Blockchain plays a significant role in magnifying the impact of this hackathon initiative across the continent and builds on THA’s previous efforts to support blockchain innovation in Africa.

For more information, please visit https://hedera-hackathon.hashgraph.swiss/