For years, building a digital asset company in Nigeria meant operating without a clear rulebook. Founders took on regulatory risk as a cost of doing business. That is beginning to change, and in our recent interview with GetEquity CEO Jude Dike, he talked about having lived through both sides of that shift.
At the beginning of July 2026, GetEquity received approval to enter Nigeria’s SEC ARIC sandbox, the Accelerated Regulatory Incubation program for digital asset issuance and trade. Only eight or nine companies currently sit inside it. For Dike, the approval is not just a licence milestone. It is confirmation that Nigeria’s SEC regulatory certainty for founders is no longer a distant promise.
“What the digital asset side allows for us to do is tokenisation,” Dike said. “The biggest advantage of the blockchain is that anyone from anywhere in the world can access it.”
How GetEquity Built Toward Nigeria SEC Regulatory Certainty
GetEquity launched in June 2021 as a platform for retail investors to access early-stage startup deals through SPVs. The timing was good. Venture capital was flowing freely, and appetite for African startups was high. However, the venture downturn hit hard. Valuations collapsed. Follow-on funding dried up. So GetEquity pivoted. Rather than abandoning its model, it extended the same SPV structure into private credit, specifically commercial papers, which had previously required a minimum of ₦5 million per individual investor.
The results were immediate. GetEquity’s first commercial paper offering hit ₦20 million by its third day. By the end of 2024, the platform had processed ₦260 million in commercial paper transactions. By the end of 2025, that figure had grown to ₦1.3 billion. Today, GetEquity manages approximately ₦2.3 billion in assets under management.
What Nigeria SEC Regulatory Certainty Through the ARIC Sandbox Enables
Nigeria’s SEC regulatory certainty through the ARIC program is significant because it unlocks tokenisation at scale. Under the sandbox, GetEquity can now create digital representations of SEC-approved investment products and allow investors globally to buy and sell them. The practical implication is compelling.
A member of the Nigerian diaspora can buy USDC, exchange it for CNGN, and invest in a tokenised commercial paper offering 23% yield in a stable naira environment. Nigerian stocks like Aradel, GTB, and Zenith become accessible to international retail investors through the same infrastructure. Furthermore, the sandbox does not just benefit GetEquity. It benefits any founder building in the digital asset space. SEC actively monitoring companies inside the program means founders receive real-time regulatory engagement, not silence followed by enforcement.
Watch the full interview HERE
Editorial Takeaway
GetEquity’s journey from a VC platform to a ₦2.3 billion private credit marketplace to a tokenisation play is not a pivot story. It is a persistence story. Dike built through a venture downturn, found product-market fit in private credit, and kept applying for a digital asset licence until Nigeria’s SEC was ready to say yes. That the sandbox now exists at all is the real headline. Nigeria’s SEC regulatory certainty is arriving, not all at once, but deliberately. For founders who stayed the course, the rulebook they’ve always asked for is finally being written.
Read the full interview: GetEquity CEO Jude Dike on Tokenization, AI, and the Future of Africa’s Capital Markets
9 Comments
This is encouraging to see. Regulatory clarity has been one of the biggest missing pieces for Web3 founders in Nigeria. The ARIC sandbox gives builders a chance to innovate while staying compliant, and it could accelerate the adoption of tokenized real-world assets across Africa. Looking forward to seeing more founders benefit from this progress.
Giving builders room to innovate within a clear regulatory framework is a win for the entire ecosystem. Hopefully, this opens the door for even more growth and adoption across Africa.
Clear rules make it easier for builders to focus on creating real value. This could be an important step toward broader Web3 adoption across Africa.
Many people have good ideas and it’s necessary for the Nigeria sector to regulate them so as to prevent hold up
“Flexibility”
The biggest advantage of the blockchain is that anyone from anywhere in the world can access it.
Regulatory clarity is a major catalyst for responsible Web3 innovation and investor confidence.
Tokenization has the potential to make investing more accessible while staying compliant.
This is a welcome development. Clear regulations have long been a key need for Web3 builders in Nigeria. The ARIC sandbox creates an environment where founders can innovate while remaining compliant, paving the way for broader adoption of tokenized real-world assets across Africa. Excited to see more innovators take advantage of this opportunity.
Great to see this progress. Regulatory clarity has been a major challenge for Web3 builders in Nigeria. The ARIC sandbox creates a pathway for innovation within a compliant environment and could help drive the growth of tokenized real-world assets across Africa. Excited to see more founders leverage this opportunity.