For millions of African families, homeownership remains frustratingly out of reach despite abundant property and investment capital. Kenyan blockchain startup Nomachain believes tokenisation could help bridge the divide.
Source: Supplied. Gideon Gitonga, co-founder of Kenya-based blockchain company Nomachain.
What began as an effort to make rent-to-own more accessible has evolved into a platform connecting property owners and developers seeking funding with local and international investors.
By digitally representing real-world assets on blockchain, Nomachain aims to create more accessible pathways to property investment and ownership, while opening African real estate to global capital. But turning that ambitious vision into a scalable, trusted reality will require more than technology alone.
“We enable aspiring homeowners to move gradually from renting to owning through structured plans, while allowing investors to participate in those assets from smaller amounts,” Gideon Gitonga, co-founder of Nomachain explains. “Our longer-term aim is to help Kenyan and broader African assets attract global capital at a meaningful scale.”
Turning an idea into real-world impact: For Gitonga, the clearest demonstration of Nomachain’s potential is not found in the technology itself, but in what homeownership can mean for a family.
He points to the experience of his co-founder, Duncan Waithaka Ndiritu, who had spent nearly a decade trying to secure a permanent home for his family.
“After nearly a decade of trying to settle his family, Waithaka, as we call him, was finally able to do so through a rent-to-own plan in Juja, Kenya, where the Nomachain Tokenized Real Estate Fund, or NTRF, successfully financed the acquisition of his four-bedroom bungalow,” Gitonga says.
For the Nomachain team, the experience provided an important real-world test of the model they were developing.
“This milestone validated that what we were building could actually work in the real world,” he says. “It reinforced that homeownership is not an abstract financial concept. It is stability, dignity and long-term security for families.”
Bridging Africa's gaps
Finding opportunity in a fragmented market: Gitonga’s background in mathematics and computer science led him into product development, business strategy and technology-enabled ventures. Through his work across fintech, capital markets and property technology, he began to understand how disconnected many African asset and investment markets remained.
“Africa has significant real assets and investment opportunities, but access to capital and investment opportunities remains highly fragmented,” he says.
Nomachain emerged from this challenge. The company initially focused on exploring how tokenisation could support more transparent rent-to-own arrangements, creating pathways through which individuals could work gradually towards owning a home while investors participated in the underlying opportunities.
As the business developed, Gitonga and his team began to see wider possibilities for the model. The same underlying infrastructure could potentially be applied to other real-world assets and financing structures, including property-backed debt, equity and investment funds.
However, turning that ambition into a viable business required more than technology and founder conviction.
Finding discipline before capital: Gitonga joined ALX Africa’s Founder Academy while building Nomachain. At the time, he was primarily searching for funding and resources to bring the idea to life.
What he found instead was a more fundamental shift in how he approached the business.
“I was looking for money and resources that could make the dream of Nomachain come to life,” he recalls. “ALX refocused us on validation. At that stage, we had strong conviction about the problem we were solving, but conviction from a founder is not the same as market validation.”
Putting customers first
Through the programme, the team was required to test its assumptions directly with prospective customers. Conversations with renters helped the founders examine whether the problem they had identified aligned with what people genuinely needed and were willing to pay for.
“The biggest change was becoming much more evidence-driven,” Gitonga says. “Speaking directly to renters forced us to separate what we thought the market needed from what customers were actually willing to use and pay for. It also made us look much more critically at unit economics.”
The process also changed how the team communicated the business. Rather than leading with blockchain and the technical architecture behind the platform, the founders learned to begin with the customer, the challenge and the value the company hoped to create.
“We moved away from explaining the technology first and focused much more on the problem, the customer and the economic value we were creating,” Gitonga says. “That lesson has stayed with me as Nomachain has evolved.”
Building on validation
With that early validation in place, Gitonga and his team progressed to the ALX Accelerator, ALX’s investment-readiness programme.
This next stage introduced a different kind of support. While the Founder Academy had helped the team test the problem and strengthen its understanding of the customer, the Accelerator focused on developing a more commercially and economically viable business.
Mentors with experience in blockchain and tokenomics challenged the team to look beyond the technology and consider the wider legal, commercial and economic structure required to support the model.
“They helped us move from thinking about blockchain as simply a technology layer to understanding it as part of the economic and market structure of the business,” Gitonga says.
The team was encouraged to examine which parts of the business needed to operate on the blockchain, which should remain off-chain, how investors would interact with the assets and how a functioning market for tokenised assets could eventually be structured.
“The mentors challenged some of our assumptions around what should be on-chain, what should remain off-chain, how investors should interact with the assets and how token liquidity could work,” he says. “That thinking has contributed significantly to where Nomachain is today.”
The progression from the Founder Academy to the Accelerator helped the team move from validating its initial assumptions to examining what would be required to build an investment-ready and scalable business.
Expanding capacity
ALX’s support for Nomachain continued beyond the formal programmes. Interns supported through ALX later joined the company and contributed to research, product development, business development and day-to-day operations.
For the Nairobi-based founder, access to emerging talent can be particularly valuable for early-stage African companies, which often have ambitious goals but limited financial and human resources.
“Having access to talented people who are willing to learn, take ownership and work in an entrepreneurial environment can materially accelerate execution,” he says. “I strongly believe Africa has the talent required to build globally relevant technology companies.”
According to Gitonga, Nomachain is also developing channels intended to connect African real-estate opportunities with investors in other regions.
Kenya remains central to the company’s regulatory and operational development, while the team continues working to strengthen the structures needed to operate across additional markets.
Preparing for the next stage
Kenya’s evolving framework for virtual assets is expected to play an important role in determining how businesses such as Nomachain can operate and partner with established financial institutions.
Nomachain says it is pursuing the regulatory approvals required for the next phase of its operations. Greater regulatory clarity could eventually create opportunities for closer collaboration with banks, fund managers and other institutions, while introducing stronger safeguards for individuals and organisations participating in tokenised asset markets.
The regulatory journey is only one part of building a trusted platform. Nomachain must also continue demonstrating that its model can operate securely, transparently and sustainably for homeowners, property developers and investors.
Gitonga’s experience so far has shown him that building a meaningful company requires the discipline to test ideas, listen to customers and adapt as the evidence changes.
His advice to other founders reflects that lesson.
“Do not procrastinate,” he says. “Start, and let the market validate and guide you towards the right solution. The customer is king in your development journey, and the sooner you engage with real users, the faster you will learn what truly matters.”
His trajectory also reflects the wider purpose of ALX’s founder programmes: helping African entrepreneurs combine local insight with practical validation, specialist guidance and access to talent as they build solutions with the potential to create wider economic and social impact.
For Gitonga, the ambition extends beyond building another technology company. It is about creating infrastructure that can connect African assets with new sources of capital while opening more realistic pathways to investment, ownership and long-term financial security.
