Access stack

Power, devices, internet, AI. And who's already bringing them there.

The pieces exist. PAYGO solar, $30 smartphones, Starlink community hubs, offline open-source AI. Ground Up's job is to route capital and coordination to the local builders who can deploy them in the regions that need them most.

Power

PAYGO solar. Customer pays via mobile money over 12–24 months, owns the system outright. ~30M units sold in Sub-Saharan Africa. Proven, scaling.

M-KOPA

PAYGO solar + smartphones bundled in one plan

Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria3M+ customers

d.light

Solar home systems + lanterns

Africa, South Asia150M+ lives reached

Sunking

Mass-market solar home systems

Sub-Saharan Africa10M+ units shipped

Bboxx

Smart solar + community mini-grids

DRC, Rwanda, TogoConflict-zone experience

Husk Power Systems

Diesel-to-solar community mini-grids

Nigeria, Tanzania, IndiaAnchor for full village power

SteamaCo

IoT metering; neighbors sell power peer-to-peer via mobile money

East AfricaPeer-to-peer energy trading

Devices

Community device hubs beat individual ownership. 20 devices at a solar-powered center with local mesh WiFi serves 200+ people. Device cost isn't the bottleneck. Data costs and offline apps are.

Transsion Group

Tecno, Itel, Infinix. Largest smartphone seller in Africa

Pan-Africa$30–80 range

KaiOS

Feature phone OS, runs lightweight apps

200M+ activations globally$15–25 hardware

Endless OS Foundation

Linux designed entirely for offline use, 60+ languages

GlobalFree, runs on old laptops

Raspberry Pi

Solar-powered community compute nodes

Global$35–75

World Computer Exchange

Refurbished laptops to schools and orgs

Developing worldNonprofit pipeline

Closing the Loop

E-waste offset that funds device access

AfricaCircular model

Internet

Architecture: Starlink backhaul at the community level → Althea mesh for local distribution → crypto micropayments per MB. Shared cost turns $50/mo into affordable-per-user.

Starlink

Community anchor point. One dish, 50–100 users via local WiFi

100+ countries including most of SSA$120 hardware, $50/mo

Google Taara

Free-space optical links, 20Gbps at 20km range

Kenya (deployed), expandingPartners with local ISPs, subsidized

Meta Express Wi-Fi

Affordable hotspot partnerships with local ISPs

Kenya, Indonesia, India, PhilippinesAlready live

Althea Networks

Mesh networking with crypto micropayments; neighbors share bandwidth, each node earns

Colombia (deployed), Africa (expanding)Best fit for Ground Up model

Zenzeleni Networks

Community-owned ISP

Rural South Africa3× cheaper than commercial telcos

Helium Mobile

Decentralized carrier; earn crypto for hosting coverage

Global (early)Incentive model aligns with GU

AI Access

AI access ≠ ChatGPT subscription. It means offline-capable models on shared community hardware, local language support, and voice-first interfaces. All of this is achievable today with open source.

LLaMA 3.2 (Meta)

Runs fully offline on a $50 Android phone. Quantized, fast

GlobalSwahili, Hausa, Arabic support growing

Masakhane

Pan-African NLP community building datasets for 50+ African languages

30+ African countriesOpen source, community-governed. The language layer

Hugging Face SmolLM

Designed for Raspberry Pi, sub-1B params

GlobalCommunity device viable

Khanmigo (Khan Academy)

AI tutoring for low-bandwidth, education-focused

Active Africa deploymentLow-bandwidth optimized

Mozilla Common Voice

Open dataset for underrepresented languages

GlobalTraining data layer for local language AI

DAIR Institute

AI fairness + African language NLP research (Timnit Gebru)

Global / Africa-focusedAcademic credibility + community connections

Builders to connect

Real people already working the problem.

Not aid workers. Founders, operators, and researchers building durable infrastructure in these regions.

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji

@iaboyeji

Top fit

Future Africa · Lagos, Nigeria

Co-founded Andela + Flutterwave. Now runs an accelerator/VC for African founders with a long-term civilizational thesis. Most aligned mind on the continent with Ground Up's investment-not-charity framing.

Erik Hersman

@whiteafrican

High fit

iHub, BRCK / Moja, Ushahidi · Nairobi, Kenya

OG African tech infrastructure builder. 15 years focused on connectivity and local builder ecosystems.

Kola Aina

@kolaaina

High fit

Ventures Platform · Nigeria

Early-stage VC with explicit social impact lens. Connected to every serious young builder in West Africa.

Njideka Harry

High fit

Youth for Technology Foundation · Nigeria

Skills training for underserved youth in Nigeria. Already running exactly the programming Ground Up would fund.

Bright Simons

@brightsimons

Strong fit

mPedigree · Ghana

Tech for underserved markets. Sharp thinker, connected to the right operators across Anglophone Africa.

Andrew Mupuya

Strong fit

Youth Business Association Uganda · Uganda

Started Uganda's Youth Business Association at 15. Proof point that young men in these regions build serious things with minimal resources.

Masakhane Community

@MasakhaneNLP

High fit

Masakhane · Pan-African

1,000+ African NLP researchers. Direct pipeline to local language AI tools for 50+ African languages.

Funding platforms

Existing platforms. Fees and fit.

Crypto rails strip the most friction. Where fiat is needed, GiveDirectly and Kiva have the deepest on-the-ground deployment.

ImpactMarket

Best fit

Crypto UBIfee ~0%

UBI protocol on Celo. $10M+ distributed to 60k+ beneficiaries. Mobile-first. Best crypto-native option for direct disbursement.

Gitcoin

Builder funding

Crypto grantsfee ~15% matching overhead

Quadratic funding for public goods. Crypto-native, proven at scale. Right for funding tools and builders.

Giveth

Donation layer

Crypto donationsfee ~0% (covers L2 gas)

Near-zero fees on L2s. Transparent on-chain. Built for exactly this use case.

GiveDirectly

Direct aid

Direct cash transferfee ~10% overhead

Lowest overhead in aid sector. Direct cash to recipients. Active in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, DRC, Malawi, Togo.

Kiva

Loan model

0% microloansfee 3–5% (field partner ops)

Huge trust network in these exact regions. Works through local MFIs. Not crypto-native but deeply deployed.

The Giving Block

Donor bridge

Crypto fundraisingfee 1–3%

Good for fiat-to-crypto onramp for donors. Works with major nonprofits.

Crypto rails

Strip the fees. Remove the friction.

Recommended stack: Celo + cUSD for disbursement → Gitcoin or Giveth for grant discovery → Stellar for cross-border settlement.

Celo + cUSD

Recommended

Disbursement layer

Purpose-built for mobile financial inclusion. Stablecoins: cUSD, cKES, cEUR. Fees < $0.001. Works via SMS on feature phones, no smartphone required. Already deployed by ImpactMarket + GoodDollar in SSA.

Stellar + USDC

Recommended

Cross-border settlement

< $0.00001 per transaction. USDC native. MoneyGram integration = cash-out in 190+ countries. Used by Stellar Aid Assist for humanitarian transfers.

Bitcoin Lightning

Micropayments

Essentially zero fees. Strike app improving UX. Harder for non-technical recipients but improving fast.

Fonbnk

Airtime → crypto

Key for regions where airtime is more accessible than banking. Converts mobile airtime to crypto directly.

Chipper Cash

Crypto + mobile money bridge

Crypto + M-Pesa / MTN / Airtel integration across Africa. Familiar UX for existing mobile money users.

AZA Finance

Institutional FX + crypto

Formerly BitPesa. Cross-border settlement rails across Africa for larger flows.

TLDR

The architecture.

Ground Up signals identify the region. Combustibility score, intervention probability, access gap.

Find local builder or org already working there (Future Africa, YTF, Masakhane, etc.).

Fund them via Celo smart contract. cUSD, near-zero fees, works on a feature phone.

They deploy: PAYGO solar hub + Transsion/Endless OS devices + Starlink backhaul + Althea mesh + offline LLaMA with local language pack.

Community co-owns the infrastructure. Builder requests follow-on via Gitcoin quadratic funding round.