With the launch of the Nandi NFT Marketplace, the African Digital Art Network (ADA), an international award-winning digital platform and repository that houses the world’s biggest digital collection of African art, announces its debut into the metaverse. Jepchumba founded the platform in 2009, and it now has a large global community of creatives, artists, and collectors.
“The early excitement and buzz surrounding our groundbreaking launch is invigorating. For more than a decade we have built a community at ADA with the intention of giving artists throughout Africa, and the African Diaspora, a voice and an opportunity to build livelihoods through their work,” says Jepchumba, Co-Founder and CEO of Nandi.
Nandi was founded to provide a platform for Black innovators to prosper in Web3. Nandi will also unveil the Nandi Cowry Community, a collection of 10,000 Nandi Cowry NFTs, each representing a unique digital item that will live on the carbon-negative Celo blockchain. R!OT Sindiso Nyoni, a Johannesburg-based artist who designed South Africa’s Mandela Centenary coin, created the Nandi Cowry NFT.
The Nandi Cowry Community NFT is a membership card that offers holders access to exclusive benefits, content, voting privileges on emerging creative fellowship grants, community curation of top digital art, and curated exhibitions on the Nandi NFT Marketplace. These benefits will be combined into member-only bonuses obtained through platform participation. Fellowships will be awarded to 1,000 young Black creators and cultural institutions by the community. GENESIS, Nandi’s first creative initiative program, has hand-selected eight musicians who will perform at ADA’s AfricaNXT conference.
A number of well-known worldwide influencers, thought leaders, and VIPs have already joined the Nandi Cowry Community as founding members and are looking forward to the debut of the NFT Marketplace.