The fact that Nigeria is Africa’s fintech giant is undisputable. It should come as no surprise that Africa’s biggest economy is revving the engine on non-fungible tokens (NFTs), ready to lead the rest of the continent in the previously unchartered path.

Endowed with Africa’s biggest creative community, Nigeria has been recording significant growth in the NFT world, thanks to a tech-savvy population and supportive Internet infrastructure.

Lagos-based Nifty Row is leading this space. It is a first of its kind global NFT marketplace for Africa’s visual and audible arts as well as other digital artistic and fine arts creations.

Welcome To African-Owned NFT Marketplace

Founded in 2022 by Bolaji Onibudo, a Web3 and blockchain connoisseur who has more than 18 years experience in technology consulting, the startup is a business-to-consumer (B2C) focused platform.

“Through Nifty Row, investors have an opportunity to participate by bidding in an NFT auction and secure the asset by being the highest bidder,” Onibudo tells Nodo News in an interview in January. “Investors can also earn royalties, while collectors can resell the assets to other investors in the future, for capital gains.”

This experience saw Onibudo get picked as the technical lead in the implementation of the Nigerian Customs Blockchain Project. He also worked in the implementation of several other blockchain projects including the Customs Excise Trader, and XendBit, among others.

His platform seeks to empower the creative arts’ community by leveraging blockchain technology with decentralized financing to ensure that fraud, counterfeit and trust issues are eliminated while maintaining the authenticity and provenance of artistic pieces.

Nifty Row aptly describes itself as a marketplace for the unsung from Africa, South America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions; featuring digital art, music, movies, and physical artworks, as it expands to more industries.

The NFT marketplace strives to deliver a unique platform that will enable creators including animators and producers to issue and auction NFTs globally, leveraging the global success of Nollywood films which are currently broadcast across Africa, the US, UK, EU and other parts of the world.

Research findings by Grand View Research show that the global NFT market size is expected to reach $211.7 billion by 2030 and one reason for the growth is the increasing popularity of blockchain technology. As at November 2021, 13.7% of Nigerian Internet users owned an NFT while 21.7% other planned to own one.

Eliminating Hurdles in NFT Adoption

With the ongoing rapid expansion of Web3 and the growing success of blockchain across the globe, there are bound to be challenges arising out of abuse of these technologies or their components.

Fraud, infringement of copyright, inadequate artwork provenance, and the uncertainty in determining the price of NFTs have been the major hurdles for Africa’s creative industry.

Such challenges have threatened the safety and public trust of the global NFT industry. “For instance, there is a lack of information verifiability,” he says. “There are not many trusted sources of information on financial nodes. And this [is] one of the key factors that NiftyRow seeks to address.”

This is the gap Nifty Row wants to bridge. Its blockchain technology’s built-in provenance feature makes it easy to audit and track an artwork’s history.

The DeFi services incorporated on the platform ensure that there are safe and transparent financial transactions conducted between the investors, collectors, and the creators of the NFTs, without the involvement of other unrelated third parties.

The Nifty Row NFT marketplace, Onibudo says, strives to deliver a unique platform that will enable creators including animators and producers “to easily and safely issue and auction NFTs globally without the involvement of middlemen.”

Afro Beat Creators Can Enjoy Platform That Protects Them

Essentially with this platform, artists are assured of both the initial sale of their NFTs, and subsequent resale commissions, that all asset rights are smoothly transferred to the collector.

It also ensures a single source of truth protocol with all NFTs being asset-backed and verified for proof of ownership without any hindrances, and “will in the coming days, enable staking, and insurance services based on NFTs.”

Onibudo is keen on onboarding Nigerian Afro beat musicians into the platform in a period when the future of global music is African. Afro beats are now a must play in European and American night clubs and radio channels.

Genres such as hiplife, jùjú music, highlife and Naija beats, which were amalgamated under the ‘afrobeats’ umbrella are now played on several international streaming platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Amazon music, Gbedu.live, and Soundcloud. Afro beat collaborations are also becoming a must have for other global contemporary artists, and singers.

Nifty Row, which works with the most compatible NFT minting platform, uses a protocol powered by a smart contract that guarantees undisputable sale finality.

Onibudo plans to venture into other domains in which the technology would be applicable for the benefit of Nigeria and the African content by extension. Such include movies, music, and collaborating with the stock exchange.

He indicates that their collaboration with the Nigerian Stocks Exchange, for instance, will be handy in that it will greatly help boost that market as well.

“The collaboration is particularly beneficial because the stock exchange has millions of customers,” he explains. “And bringing them into the marketplace would, in many ways, enhance the stock exchange’s effectiveness.”