<u>Project Brief:</u>
<u>Main Challenge:</u>
Historically, Wada has been a service-first, philanthropic organisation, often thought of as an NGO or non-profit who's main value is education, outreach and user adoption on the African continent. While this is partly true in objective, there is a definite need to transition away from Catalyst and grant-based funding for core operational costs, as the predictability, security and coverage is not currently sufficient in order to sustain a dedicated team.
<u>Proposed Solution:</u>
Wada will begin the transition, both as a brand and operationally, towards being a technology company with revenue-generating products. The mission and vision remain the same, the approach is changing, for the purposes of:
- Scalability
- Impact
- Reputation
- Adoption
- Employment
The flagship product under development is the WadaDEX, a two-tier liquidity and capital-raising marketplace for African business to accelerate Cardano-adoption and reduce friction when fundraising. <https://wadadex.io/>
Other products under research & development currently are:
- WadaMint
- Wada Catalyst Consulting
- Wada Edutech Platform
- Wada DLabs
Impact accelerator & leadership mentor partner: Over the past month, Wada has been working closely with the Edify team, an impact-acceleration consultancy based out of the UK (2x Funded F7 Proposers). Edify have been working as both organisational leadership consultants and commercial strategy advisors in order to help enunciate the value that Wada brings to the Cardano ecosystem. Out of these strategy sessions has come a suite of products currently in R&D. https://www.edifybusiness.co.uk/
<u>Challenge Impact:</u>
As of the current date, Wada has onboarded and supported the successful funding of a large number of Africa-based projects in the Catalyst ecosystem. Previous success stories such as Empowa, CheCha Wallet, Wutano and more all highlight the impact that Wada has had, not to mention the educational component of training African Haskell developers and the creation of a network of community hubs.
- Number of African projects seeded: <u>Very High</u>
- Cardano tech-use cases: Medium (Our focus is now on this area)
- African Developers onboarded: High
- Local Impact: <u>Very High</u>
- Local Partnerships: High
*See attached 'Wada Overview' timeline for more detail*
<u>Key Outcomes:</u>
The key outcome of this proposal will be the building of Cardano-based technology solutions that scale the impact that has already been achieved. Within the next 6 months, Wada aims to:
- Double the size of its network reach (500+)
- Hold at least one external fundraising round ($500k+)
- Launch the MVP of at least one Cardano-based technology product
<u>Risk Management:</u>
Product Adoption: The advantage of Wada's previous work on community building, network creation and member onboarding is that it now has a deep pool of human resources with which to test, iterate and improve product offerings based on needs, testing and feedback. This is part technological innovation and part market innovation in a hybridised approach.
Product Development: Wada's growing network of developers, as well as it's strong partnerships in the Cardano ecosystem means that sourcing developers and technical experts is unlikely to be an issue.
Rebrand: In order to ensure a smooth transition, Wada will hire a brand consultant in order to manage the process and provide an appropriate Change framework.
Future sustainability: As a meta-solution, the proposal itself is focused on the future sustainability of a network of present and future proposals, both from Africa and worldwide. The solution that will allow Wada to carry out it's mission is to ensure financial sustainability through revenue-generating technology products. Once this is achieved, the scale, impact and broader reach will be readily apparent through more projects, proposals, developers and user activity.