The Stellar Community Fund (SCF), a grant program run by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), the non-profit organization supporting the development of the Stellar network, has awarded approximately $4.04 million worth of XLM to 40 projects in its 45th funding round, with five recipients building explicitly for African markets, according to the official round recap.

XLM is the native digital asset of the Stellar network. The Africa-focused projects in Round #45 span stablecoin banking, cross-border payments, trade finance, and local-currency settlement, underscoring the continued emphasis on connecting dollar-denominated digital assets with existing African financial infrastructure.

The Five Africa-Focused Projects

Sorted is building a stablecoin banking app designed for users with Android Go devices, older or basic phones, and intermittent connectivity. Android Go is a lighter version of Google's Android operating system optimized for entry-level smartphones. The project specifically targets users in Africa and South Asia, seeking to provide access to digital dollars without requiring users to navigate crypto-native wallets, gas fees, or bridging.

Minisend is building a Stellar-based settlement rail that allows users to send USDC, a US dollar stablecoin issued by Circle, and receive local currency through Safaricom's M-PESA, Airtel Money, and bank accounts in Africa. The project uses Stellar's anchor standards and Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), which moves USDC natively between blockchains, to connect stablecoins with local payment rails.

Announcing the grant in a post on X, the company wrote:\n> @StellarOrg is backing us with $100k grant to keep building. Stablecoins move across multiple chains, but getting that liquidity into local payment rails can still mean dealing with bridges, gas fees, fragmented liquidity and P2P. We're building Minisend to connect those onchain… pic.twitter.com/ZF4UZJfmYn

— Minisend (@minisendapp), September 30, 2026

Kutana is a business-to-business (B2B) cross-border trade platform for African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Its Trade Secure product uses USDC on Stellar for milestone-based escrow, with funds released as trade milestones are completed. The model is aimed at reducing some of the payment and trust frictions involved in cross-border African trade.

lomi. is building a Stellar bridge and anchor for XOF/USDC, connecting its payment infrastructure to the eight-country West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) market, whose members share the West African CFA franc. The integration connects mobile-money and card payments to Stellar-based settlement, giving stablecoins a bridge into Francophone West African payment infrastructure.

Slimepay is building a Stellar anchor and merchant settlement rail for African currencies, with its initial infrastructure focused on USDC-to-NGN payments, where NGN is the Nigerian naira. The project uses Stellar's SEP-6, SEP-24, and SEP-31 standards, which define how anchors connect customer accounts and local bank rails to the network.

A Consistent Direction for Stellar in Africa

Taken together, the five projects show a fairly consistent direction for Stellar's Africa strategy in this funding round. The focus is not primarily on speculative crypto applications. Instead, it centers on stablecoin access, local-currency conversion, cross-border settlement, and trade infrastructure.

In other words, the common thread is the connection between global digital dollars and existing African financial rails — from M-PESA and Airtel Money to bank accounts, mobile-money networks, and B2B trade.

Five of 40 funded projects represents 12.5% of SCF Round #45, making Africa a notable geographic theme within the cohort.