MEST Africa Challenge 2025 Crowns Black Swan as Winner
Black Swan, a Mauritius-based Fintech startup, has emerged as the winner of the MEST Africa Challenge (MAC) 2025. The announcement followed the grand finale of the competition, which was held at Innovation City in Cape Town on November 26, 2025.
According to a statement released on Tuesday, the 2025 edition of the competition specifically focused on fintechs that are implementing strategic innovations to enhance financial inclusion. The Grand Finale showcased 10 finalists, each presenting scalable solutions designed to address challenges within payments, credit, insurance, and trade finance.
As the 2025 winner, Black Swan is set to receive a $50,000 equity investment. Additionally, the startup will gain entry into the MEST Portfolio and will have the opportunity to pilot commercial solutions in collaboration with Absa business units across Africa.
Ashwin Ravichandran, Portfolio Advisor at MEST Africa, commented on the significance of the event, highlighting how Fintech is driving progress in other sectors like agriculture, energy, and trade. He noted that the pitch competition demonstrated a clear trend towards building for scalability and founders being prepared for cross-border operations.
“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,”
Ashwin Ravichandran, Portfolio Advisor at MEST Africa
About the MEST Africa Challenge
The MEST Africa Challenge is recognized as one of the continent's premier Pan-African pitch competitions. It is championed by the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST Africa) and powered by Absa Group. The primary objective of the event is to identify and support early-stage startups, guiding them through their growth phases.
This year's MEST Africa Challenge attracted hundreds of applications from Absa’s eight key markets: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Uganda, and Zambia. Absa Group Limited is a prominent pan-African bank headquartered in South Africa, with operations in 10 African countries. It was formerly part of Barclays Africa.
Following a rigorous selection process, 20 startups advanced to the semifinals. Of these, 10 reached the grand finale in Cape Town, where they presented their pitches to a distinguished panel of judges, including investors, Absa executives, and industry leaders.
Since its inception in 2008, the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) Africa has been instrumental in training and supporting over 2,000 entrepreneurs. The organization has also invested in more than 90 startups. The MEST Africa Challenge (MAC) stands as its flagship pan-African pitch competition, dedicated to discovering, nurturing, and scaling promising technology ventures.
Meet Black Swan: Bridging Africa's Credit Gap
Black Swan, co-founded by Derick Kazimoto, is leveraging artificial intelligence and alternative data to develop credit scoring models for Africa's unbanked population. The company employs AI models to analyze diverse alternative data sources, such as mobile-money transactions and utility-bill payments. This analysis generates credit assessments for individuals and SMEs who have limited or no formal credit history.
Kazimoto explained the critical gap that Black Swan is addressing: Africa's financial system currently fails to recognize the true creditworthiness of millions of consumers and Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs). This is because much of the relevant data is invisible to traditional lenders.
“This invisibility locks out capable borrowers, limits credit growth, and slows economic mobility. Our mission is to make Africa bankable. 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,”
Derick Kazimoto, Co-founder of Black Swan
The Mauritius-based startup is committed to banking the unbanked by transforming fragmented data into instant credit intelligence. The company underwent a rebranding from Tausi to Black Swan in April 2025.