Gluwa x Lekki Free Trade Zone

Gluwa is partnering with the Lekki Free Zone to help support digital innovation, trade and manufacturing in Africa using blockchain technology.

We’re excited to announce that we are close to agreeing a partnership with the Lekki Free Zone Development Company over plans to bring blockchain technology to Nigeria’s Lekki Free Zone, helping to promote new trade opportunities, growth and digital innovation.

The Lekki Free Trade Zone is designed to foster foreign and domestic investment and innovation by allowing companies to import and export goods, manufacture products, and perform services without constraint from the usual customs, labor and taxation regulations. Located next to the largest deep sea port in West Africa, the Lekki Free Zone hosts over 132 enterprises, as well as the new Dangote Refinery, the largest single-train oil refinery in the world.

The partnership would see Gluwa supervising the development of a dashboard for the digitization and tokenization of tradable goods into NFTs (non-fungible tokens), thereby improving supply chain efficiency and tracking, while allowing companies to digitize and bring real-world trade on-chain and into Web3.

The partnership would also see the development of new opportunities for digital asset-backed business loans for enterprises within the Lekki Free Zone. Both parties have also discussed opportunities for the creation of a Virtual Free Zone for digital and Web3 businesses within the Lekki Free Zone.

Lekki Free Zone’s Head of Strategy, Innovation & Special Projects, Mr. Tomiwa Idowu,

“I am extremely excited and motivated by the endless possibilities and enormous potentials of such a partnership, it would further establish Lagos State as Africa’s leading sub-national in terms of innovation, economic development and revenue generation.”

Gluwa CEO, Tae Oh,

“Trading has been the bedrock of the Nigerian economy, with annual volumes running into billions of dollars. We believe the digitization of the sector can allow us to harness its full potential. For instance, a standard process to digitize goods manufactured or processed within the zone in tandem with a market system on web3 will allow manufacturers to trade globally via the blockchain.

All trades will be registered and benefit from the incentives of the Lekki Free Zone, such as zero taxation and free circulation of goods. As soon as the goods get settled for export by the in-Zone Customs Processing Center, they will get shipped out straight from the Lekki Free Zone via the Deep-Sea port.

This would reduce delays, eliminate human errors, exponentially drive-up Nigeria’s non-oil exports and sustain a positive trade balance for the nation. While we are still working out the fine details and a specific framework with NEPZA (Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority), we believe it is the future of commerce and trade in Africa”

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About Gluwa

Gluwa is an RWA platform, connecting capital from developed markets to emerging market lending opportunities using blockchain technology. By providing the decentralized infrastructure rails to raise and disburse capital anywhere in the world, investors can use the Gluwa Invest platform to partake in debt-financing deals with emerging market fintech lenders, earning up to 15% APY.