AyaHQ Closed Its Kilifi Residency After Funding Ran Out

AyaHQ shut down its 40-bed Kilifi residency in Kenya in October 2026 after nearly two years of operations, because the funding ran dry. "We closed Kilifi in October 2026. Funding ran out, and we could not secure what it took to keep it running," co-founder Eric Annan told TechCabal.

The closure caps a six-year run in which AyaHQ — founded by Annan, Pishikeni Tukura and Dennis Ukonu, and incorporated in October 2020 — has been a stablecoin payments product, a remote-jobs marketplace, a training programme, a founder programme and the operator of physical residencies in two countries. Annan admits the identity has confused people.

"A lot of people do not understand what we're doing. In fact, we have people ask, 'What exactly do you guys do? What exactly do you guys do?' So, we are operating a black box which is not visible," he said.

What came before AyaHQ?

Annan's earlier startup failed for a reason he keeps returning to. "I have previous experience of failing a startup that could have scaled, become a billion-dollar company, but it failed because there was zero empathy among the team," he said. He compares a startup to an orchestra: distinct roles that must play together. That failure framed the question behind AyaHQ — could a platform help founders find people who believe in their vision, technical or not?

The company's first product, Aya.cash, launched in 2021 as a stablecoin peer-to-peer payment platform helping African remote workers get paid across borders during the COVID-19 remote-work boom. But payments exposed a deeper problem.

"Aya.cash showed us that a faster payment is worth nothing if the person never wins the work that triggers it. The real problem was visibility and access: African talent was invisible to global employers," Annan said.

How did a payments app become a founder factory?

In May 2022, AyaHQ launched Aya Gigs, connecting African digital professionals with international employers. By August 2022, it had placed more than 100 professionals. Then demand fell. Talent that looked good on paper struggled inside global teams — Annan recalls a Ghanaian professional whose repeated "please" puzzled American colleagues.

"Employers judged how people communicated, collaborated, solved problems, and delivered inside distributed teams," he said. "This is not a skills deficit in African talent. There is a gap between how talent is usually trained and what modern collaborative workplaces demand. Access gets people in the door. Capability keeps them there."

AyaHQ retired Aya Gigs as its core business in September 2022 and pivoted to training, funded by a grant from Coinbase, the US-based crypto exchange. The first programme put software developers, product designers and product managers in one room. Graduates kept repeating one sentence: "I can build my own company." So the company shifted again. "We moved from preparing people for jobs to building the environments where founders are made," Annan said.

What do the numbers look like now?

The founder programme launched in June 2023. AyaHQ opened a 32-bed residency in Accra, Ghana, in May 2023 and a second in Kilifi in January 2025. Across both sites, the company ran six formal cohorts with 250 founders across more than 80 startups. Its total reach: more than 1,700 founders, builders and ecosystem participants from over 20 countries, plus more than $500,000 in grants distributed to over 35 startups across 25-plus countries through its partnership with blockchain company Lisk.

The model relies on institutions paying AyaHQ to design and deliver founder programmes, plus small equity stakes in some startups. In September, Lisk exited the market and AyaHQ lost a major source of support.

"The model worked. We built real founder infrastructure, drew serious builders, and showed what is possible on very little," Annan said of Kilifi. "A physical residency needs consistent backing, and we had almost none from institutions or government while working on youth employment, entrepreneurship, and innovation, the areas they are mandated to fund."

What happens next?

The Accra facility stays open as a working hub — residencies, coworking, mentorship, retreats and ecosystem events rather than fixed cohorts. Annan sees three paths: patient capital with a longer runway, running as a philanthropic social enterprise, or deepening work with what he calls the continent's ministries of digital economies.

His sharpest point is about who funds African founders. "Everybody who has supported our vision, our mission is somebody who is not African. We can't continue to be begging our way out of poverty. We have to be intentional," he said.

Annan insists the pivots never broke the mission. "AyaHQ never changed its mission. Each product moved us closer to the real problem." Whether patient capital shows up will decide if that line keeps running.