Mauritius FinTech Black Swan Wins the MEST Africa Challenge 2025
Black Swan, a Mauritius-based FinTech startup, has been announced as the winner of the MEST Africa Challenge (MAC) 2025 after an energetic Grand Finale held at Innovation City in Cape Town on November 26, 2025. Organised by the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST Africa) and powered by Absa Group, the MEST Africa Challenge is one of the continent’s most influential pitch competitions, offering early-stage startups investment opportunities, mentorship, and visibility across global innovation ecosystems.
The 2025 edition placed a strong focus on FinTech, highlighting startups building embedded financial solutions that are driving inclusion, improving payment systems, and accelerating Africa’s digital transformation. This year’s winner, Black Swan, co-founded by Derick Kazimoto, aims to “Make Africa Bankable” by solving one of the continent’s most persistent financial challenges: data invisibility. Millions of Africans and MSMEs remain excluded from formal lending because their financial information is fragmented, informal, or difficult to verify.
Black Swan’s platform converts this scattered data into instant, dependable credit intelligence, enabling lenders to make precise affordability assessments and extend credit to previously invisible borrowers. According to Kazimoto, traditional lenders cannot fully understand the creditworthiness of millions of potential borrowers due to this data gap, which restricts credit growth and limits economic mobility. He emphasised that Africa is shifting from collateral-heavy to data-driven lending, a transformation that is reshaping how banks and FinTechs assess risk and scale their services.
MAC 2025 attracted hundreds of applications from Absa priority markets including Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Seychelles and Mauritius. After a thorough evaluation process, ten startups were selected to pitch before a panel of investors, Absa leaders, and industry experts at the Cape Town finale. The event showcased a wide range of innovative solutions addressing challenges in payments, credit scoring, insurance, and trade finance, reflecting Africa’s growing strength in FinTech-led problem solving.
Ashwin Ravichandran, Portfolio Advisor at MEST Africa, congratulated Black Swan and all the finalists, noting that this year’s competition signalled a shift toward startups building for scale right from the early stages. He observed that founders are increasingly prioritising compliance, interoperability, and cross-border readiness—hallmarks of a maturing innovation ecosystem.
As the winner, Black Swan will receive US $50,000 in equity investment, entry into the MEST Portfolio, and an opportunity to pilot commercial solutions with Absa business units across the continent, support that will help the company strengthen its technology and widen its impact across Africa.
Tawanda Chatikobo, Head of Digital for Absa Regional Operations, Retail and Business Banking, said Black Swan was selected because its solution meets a clear market need and aligns with Absa’s mission to enhance customer experience across diverse markets. Meanwhile, Tamu Dutuma, Head of Strategy and Transformation for Technology at Absa Regional Operations, praised Black Swan’s technical discipline, the clarity of its product architecture, and its thoughtful approach to responsible scaling.
Now in its seventh year, the MEST Africa Challenge has become a major launchpad for emerging founders, providing visibility, mentorship, and access to strategic partners. The programme continues to connect early-stage ventures with established industry players, combining the agility of startups with the reach of large corporations. Since 2008, MEST Africa has trained more than 2,000 entrepreneurs and invested in over 90 startups, reinforcing its commitment to supporting Africa’s next generation of technology leaders.
