Connecting African Freelancers to the Global Market; A Look at AfriBlocks Democratising Freelance Market for Africans

5 min readMay 5, 2023

While the global market for freelancing has been on the rise, Africa has struggled to keep pace due to a lack of basic tools like constant power supply, affordable internet connection, and seamless payment gateways, among other challenges. Despite the continent’s large population, it accounts for only 10% of the global outsourcing market in freelancing. Additionally, freelancers in Africa often face discrimination and high service fees, making it difficult for them to access job opportunities in other parts of the world.

AfriBlocks is changing this by offering a pan-African freelancers marketplace that uses blockchain technology to connect African professionals with clients worldwide. By building trust through its blockchain platform, AfriBlocks is helping to grow the demand for freelancing within Africa and enhance global opportunities for freelancers on the global market.

On the latest session of BuildUp Africa S1E7, Adaverse discusses the emerging freelancing economy with AfriBlocks CEO, focusing on the possibilities of growth with blockchain technology to increase work opportunities for the growing youth populated on the continent.

Tune in to BuildUp Africa S1E7 on your favourite podcast platform

Meet the CEO of AfriBlocks

Tongayi Choto, the CEO of AfriBlocks, is a software developer with a background in Mathematics and Computer Science. His passion for cross-continent collaboration and a democratized freelance platform led him to create AfriBlocks. Tongayi, a Zimbabwean visionary, is dedicated to empowering African freelancers by providing them with easy access to global opportunities. He understands the challenges they face, such as high fees and cross-border payment difficulties, and thus envisions a tailored platform for African freelancers to compete on a global scale.

Challenges Faced By African Freelancers In Accessing Global Job Opportunities

African freelancers face significant challenges when it comes to connecting with the global community, hindering their ability to showcase their talents and secure work opportunities. African freelancing platforms have struggled to gain traction, while global platforms often come with high service fees and biased rating systems that disadvantage African freelancers. Additionally, receiving payments from international clients is a significant hurdle, with limited financial infrastructure and high transaction costs. PayPal which is active in more than 40 of Africa’s 54 countries, only allows users to receive payments in 12 of those. This means that many African freelancers are effectively restricted from receiving payments from international clients. Other payment methods are available, of course, but these aren’t necessarily widely known or trusted across the world.

AfriBlocks: Democratizing the Freelance Market for Africans through Blockchain Technology

The potential of blockchain developers in Africa to drive innovation and development cannot be overemphasized. This is why AfriBlocks plays a significant role in connecting Africa’s blockchain developers to global job opportunities by creating an escrow platform that pairs service needs with the best-fit service providers in less time and at a lower cost through the use of smart contracts and cryptocurrency.

Freelancing opportunities can be made more accessible to Africans by leveraging innovative technology solutions tailored to the unique challenges faced by African freelancers in connecting to the global market. AfriBlocks has responded to this need by creating a scalable and trustworthy platform that connects African freelancers with the global market. This platform offers a range of services, including:

Promoting trust in African talents by verifying skills
Creating transparency and trust among contractors using the platform
Equipping African freelancers with collaboration tools to facilitate precise and timely project completion
Automatically matching clients with freelancers who meet the user’s qualifications to save time spent browsing profiles
Facilitating easy and secure payments for freelancers through the use of cryptocurrency
Streamlining work processes and assigning project managers to aid deliverables and ensure customer satisfaction
Offering community and development resources to help freelancers upskill and remain competitive in the global marketplace, including access to tech and data courses on Coursera and Datacamp through a partnership
Hosting an annual freelancer summit to promote and advocate for collaborative measures that can support the freelancing industry in Africa.

Watch Tongayi’s interview on YouTube. Click play

The Future of Freelancing

Tongayi envisions a future where Africans hold a significant share of the freelancing market, outsourcing to Africa and the global market. In the podcast, he shared his plans for AfriBlocks in building and supporting a thriving freelance community in Africa by optimizing its UI/UX design to ensure clients and freelancers find the website easy to use.

He is focused on making the platform super easy to use for seamless transactions between clients and freelancers. He believes that simplicity will attract more people to the platform as technology doesn’t always have to be complicated. Connecting more talent to services by seeking what works best for both parties is what matters most.

To achieve this, he plans on building AfriBlocks’ technology with the help of web3 developers and seeking feedback from clients and freelancers on what they want to see and what can be improved. With time, AfriBlocks will compete with Upwork and Fiverr once it moves past limiting infrastructures and guarantees seamless collaborations between global clients and remote African talent.

This is a call to African freelance developers to join AfriBlocks and take advantage of the opportunities it offers. It is a community that seeks to bridge the gap between African talent and the global community.

The AfriBlocks Freelancers Summit 2023 Is Here!

The premier annual event for African freelancers is set to take place on May 5th (online) and 6th 2023 in Harare, Zimbabwe. With the theme “Freelancing, Entrepreneurship, and Beyond,” AfriBlocks is marking the 3rd anniversary of its Freelancers Summit. The event, which is open to the global community, will launch with a 2-day summit, and the first day will be hosted online, offering attendees an opportunity to share knowledge and engage in healthy conversations around freelancing.

With a lineup of distinguished speakers, interactive workshops, and networking opportunities, the summit has been designed to empower attendees and equip them with the necessary skills to succeed in the ever-evolving freelancing industry.

Visit www.freelancerssummit.org for more information.

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