Black Swan, a Mauritius-based fintech start-up, has been named the winner of the MEST Africa Challenge 2025 following a high-energy grand finale at Innovation City in Cape Town last week.
The contest is led by the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST Africa) and powered by Absa Group. It provides a platform for early-stage start-ups to secure funding, mentorship, and global visibility.
According to the organisers, the 2025 edition focused to fintech; spotlighting start-ups and embedded financial solutions driving inclusion, smarter payments, and digital transformation across the continent’s economies, attracting hundreds of applications from eight of Absa priority markets, namely Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Seychelles, and Mauritius.
After a rigorous selection process, ten start-ups advanced to the Cape Town finale, where they pitched to a panel of judges comprising investors, Absa executives, and industry leaders, with the Mauritian firm emerging as the winning team.
Its solution focuses making micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) bankable to formal lenders by turning fragmented data into instant credit intelligence that enables precise affordability assessments and inclusive lending at scale.
The company will receive $50,000 in equity investment, entry into the MEST Portfolio, and the opportunity to pilot commercial solutions with Absa business units across Africa; support that will help the company scale its technology and expand its impact across the continent.
“Congratulations to Black Swan and all ten finalists of this year’s MEST Africa Challenge. This year showed a clear shift toward building for scale; founders are prioritising compliance, interoperability, and cross-border readiness from day one.
"Fintech is now powering real sectors like agriculture, energy, and trade, and that’s where lasting impact will come from. At MEST, we’re inspired to see entrepreneurs building solutions that are deeply local yet globally adaptable. It reflects a new maturity in African innovation; grounded in customer realities, and ambitious enough to scale across borders,” commented, Ashwin Ravichandran, portfolio advisor at MEST Africa.
Reflecting on the fintech’s platform, co-founder and CEO of Black Swan, Derick Kazimoto said: “Africa’s financial system cannot see the true creditworthiness of millions of consumers and MSMEs because their data is fragmented, informal, and invisible to traditional lenders.
"This invisibility locks out capable borrowers, limits credit growth, and slows economic mobility. We believe Africa is shifting from informal, collateral-heavy lending to data-driven credit. A transformation that’s changing how banks and fintechs trust, lend, and grow.”
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