- IOTA’s $10M investment marks a significant step towards digitizing global trade and finance.
- The initiative aims to empower startups and innovators, especially in the UAE and Africa, to create cutting-edge trade solutions.
The IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation, based in the United Arab Emirates, has announced a colossal investment exceeding $10 million. This strategic funding is dedicated to nurturing early-stage startups, ventures, pilots, and the infrastructure necessary for revolutionizing TradeTech, Trade Finance, and the Tokenization of real-world assets.
This initiative not only highlights the foundation’s commitment to innovation but also sets the stage for a transformative shift in how global trade operations are conducted.
The #IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation
just committed $10 million to fuel early-stage startups and ventures in #TradeTech, #TradeFi, & #tokenization. This aims to supercharge #DigitalTrade ecosystems across the Middle East, Africa, Europe & beyond
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https://t.co/bgrJ0OTy2s pic.twitter.com/BKktl9goK8
— IOTA (@iota) February 29, 2024
Fostering Innovation in TradeTech
The announcement, which promises to unveil the first set of investments in the upcoming weeks, focuses on empowering newly founded tradetech ventures and accelerator programs specifically tailored for startups leveraging the IOTA platform. This move underscores a robust strategy aimed at catalyzing the development and adoption of cutting-edge technologies in trade and finance.
Following the formalization of a collaborative agreement at the WTO MC13 event, the Trade Logistics Information Pipeline (TLIP) emerges as a cornerstone of this new digital trade infrastructure.
Initially developed by the IOTA Foundation alongside TradeMark Africa, TLIP’s consortium will be bolstered by the joint efforts of the World Economic Forum, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Trademark Africa, the Institute of Export and International Trade, and the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation.
This coalition aims to elevate TLIP to a global, publicly accessible trade facilitation platform by establishing a neutral governance framework.
Africa: The Frontier of Digital Trade Advancement
The IOTA Foundation’s investment strategy includes a special emphasis on startups based in the UAE and across Africa. This decision is inspired by the continent’s demonstrated potential to leapfrog into advanced digital trade practices, as evidenced by TLIP’s successful pilot in Kenya.
The digital transformation of trade processes from the grassroots level to international transshipment points could drastically enhance the competitiveness of African products on the global stage, create sustainable job opportunities, and improve living standards across the continent.
To kickstart this ambitious initiative, IOTA plans to launch a public grants program, followed by accelerator programs in the UAE and Africa. These initiatives are designed to support and empower entrepreneurs and innovators at the forefront of developing novel trade solutions on both the IOTA and TLIP platforms, as previously reported by Crypto News Flash.
The Ripple Effect of Digitizing Trade
The digitization of trade is poised to bring about seismic shifts in the global economic landscape. By automating and streamlining trade transactions, the industry could see an 80% reduction in costs, a significant narrowing of the trade finance gap, a reduction in cross-border processing times from 25 days to just one, and a 35% increase in SME efficiency.
These changes promise to enhance global trade efficiency and unlock unprecedented opportunities for businesses worldwide.
In the midst of that development, the price of IOTA has risen 1.14% in the last 24 hours, reaching a price of $0.3009. This represents an increase of 11.35% over the past 7 days.
