Minexx

Marcus is a socially driven entrepreneur who has built and scaled multiple companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. An Engineer by background, Marcus is passionate about how technology can improve lives at a global scale and has dedicated his career to building scalable, high impact, companies. Marcus leads Minexx on their mission to satisfy the world’s appetite for technology in a fair way for people and the planet. Prior to this Marcus was an early employee at BBOXX, an off-grid utility company that provides 1 million people each day with electricity. Marcus helped scale the company from zero customers, managing technical teams of up to 200, and lead the vision for 'Tomorrow's Rural Home'. In other industries, in 2016 Marcus started a 4 bedroom AirBnB in Rwanda, this evolved into Nest Hotels, a socially driven hotel group with multiple locations around the country that was voted Rwanda’s Best Guesthouse 2019.

The foundation of modern society is electronics, from electric cars to smartphones. But 1/3 of minerals in electronics are sourced from 40 million small scale 'artisanal' miners. The unfairness of long and complex value chains propagates their poverty. A miner's most critical relationship is the mineral buyer but artisanal miners work with undependable middlemen, this clouds accountability and prevents systemic improvement at a scale. 

Minexx create a digital marketplace to empower artisanal miners and formalise financial flows for mineral buyers. The Minexx digital wallet and fairprice algorithm ensures that miners are paid directly and blockchain technology gives transparency by tracking minerals across the value chain. The platform is operational in DRC with 500 miners and has processed $250k of fair payments.

Minexx is poised to impact the 250 million people who depend on the industry. Elevate's support will be catalytic for our mission to connect miners to the world.

The foundation of modern society is electronics from electric cars to smartphones. However, there is an unfortunate reality behind electronics that makes for an unfair world. Electronics contain conflict minerals that propagate poverty. These minerals are essential for electronics and our global transition to a fully electric carbon free future. Ultimately, our modern society is built of minerals that propagate poverty.

The current mineral value chain is fundamentally flawed. Over 250 million people worldwide get their income from small scale mining and yet is it the most unsophisticated $100bn market in the world. Miners currently work in unsafe conditions with little market access. They are at the mercy of undependable middle men who make or break their livelihood - miners rarely get a fair price and lack access to capital and expertise to grow and formalise. Furthermore, governments struggle to regulate the industry; tax evasion is common and illegal smuggling routes rampant. Ultimately, this  leads to little accountability for electronics companies who risk funding conflict and child labour through their minerals.

Minexx connect miners to the world. We create a fair, direct, digital marketplace to transform the lives or artisanal miners and formalise financial flows for buyers.

Minexx provide a fair, direct and digital marketplace for artisanal miners to transform their lives whilst formalising the financial flows for mineral buyers.

Miners use the MineSmart App which is available on smartphone, feature phone and desktop and provides miners with a Minexx wallet where payments are made directly to them. Our IoT fair price algorithm also ensures that miners are paid fairly. We have in-country teams that allow us to efficiently onboard cooperatives & concession owners. Our platform also enables us to build the capacity of mine sites by providing equipment financing and expertise to enable technical, commercial and legal development. 

Furthermore, the use of blockchain on our platform formalizes trade finance. It allows users to track the inventory across the entire chain and blockchain certified payments guarantee that miners are paid for their labour. Additionally, the transparency and legitimacy of our blockchain technology ensures that compliance goals will be met across the value chain. Our platform provides OECD compliant blockchain certificates, meets digital tax payments & has whistleblowing contingency.

Ultimately, this is about who benefits from technology? Through your smartphone you hold the answer. We believe that technology should work for the miners, not against them.

Our first market is the Democratic Republic of Congo. DRC is the world’s largest cobalt producer and 20% of its population is dependent on small-scale mining. We form partnerships with mining cooperatives to formalise their activities, create trust in the value chain and access to a direct marketplace. These mining cooperatives are located in the most unconnected parts of the world.

To date, we have connected with 500 miners and processed $250,000 in fair digital payments. These payments that have increased income by 15% and studies show they reduce corruption by 50%. Our partners have used the platform to leverage access to finance from banks - this has enabled them to get an excavator to clear topsoil and mine more safely. Our smart contracts are being rolled out to provide miners with vital services such as healthcare and solar panels as part of the purchase contract.

Our team are based in Rwanda and DRC with a tech team in Europe. We use our on the ground presence to adopt a human centred framework for product iteration, it is this that has lead us to develop a call centre and USSD application for miners to view payments and raise incidents.

Artisanal miners have been a long neglected group not only in the mining industry but in our global community. Traditionally, reform in the mining industry has mainly addressed large-scale mining and ASM has been governed under those principles. ASM is a unique and complex system and as a result of this apathy, a dangerous and flawed system has emerged around the miners. In fact, some in the industry have called for ASM to be outlawed. At Minexx, we want to help formalize ASM so that we can protect the livelihoods of miners and provide them with safe working conditions.

We started Minexx to confront an unfair reality in our society: the minerals that power our smartphones, electric cars and wind turbines propagate poverty and risk funding conflict. A third of all essential minerals are currently sourced by small-scale miners: they dig up minerals by hand, get an unfair price and work in unsafe environments whilst tech companies risk sourcing minerals that fund conflict or child labour. This is a problem we learned about first-hand whilst building our previous company BBOXX, an off-grid solar company that provides 1 million people each day with electricity. We found that one group of potential customers, the miners, were unable to access solar solutions because of unreliable payments and unfair contracts. We saw that the very miners who dig up the minerals to make clean energy solutions possible are not able to access those solutions. The unacceptable social cost of ‘clean’ energy was clear. Therefore, we created the Minexx platform to connect miners to the world through a fair, direct and digital marketplace. We aim to serve 1 million miners by 2025 on our journey to impacting the 250 million people who depend on the industry. 

An engineer by background I have always believed in the power of technology to improve lives at global scale. After joining BBOXX as an early employee my belief was confirmed. Over 6 years we built the business from serving zero customers to providing a million people across 14 Sub-Saharan nations access to affordable clean energy through IoT solar panels. We built team of 2000 people and worked with partners from Mitsubishi to EDF. 

However, we found that one of our customers, the miners, were unable to access our solution due to their unreliable and unfair pay. In doing so we witnessed the unethical paradox within clean energy: the very miners who dig up the minerals to make clean energy possible can't access that it. It is a global and fundamental injustice that our modern society is built on minerals that propagate poverty. We realised that through technologies such as blockchain, digital payments and IoT we could bring trust and accountability to the system.

The question is, who benefits from technology? We believe that technology should work for the miners, not against them. We started Minexx to address this injustice and connect miners to the world.

Our journey and identity at Minexx, as a social enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa, has been shaped and developed by our extensive work at BBOXX. Due to this factor we have an unfair advantage over the rest of our competitors: we have done this before. 

Our founding team at Minexx successfully built BBOXX, a solar energy company that transforms the lives of 1.3 million people each day through clean energy access. To date, BBOXX have raised $200mn in financing and have scaled our solution in 14 sub-Saharan frontier markets. Our journey has led to us developing relationships with governments in DRC, Togo and Rwanda. At the heart of our work, we have built a blockchain enabled, IoT platform that processes 1 million digital payments every week. 

Unlike our competitors who are tackling this issue, the team Minexx has an intimate and in-depth understanding of the demands of implementing Africa innovative and scalable solutions for frontier markets. We believe that this understanding, alongside our existing connections with government and technological capacity, sets us apart from other ASM solutions and organisations. 

Ultimately, Minexx is not a basement start-up in Silicon Valley. We have boots on the ground and real trust with the decision makers of the people we want to help.

Minexx is tackling the challenge of re-defining the extractives industry head on. For a long time, mining has been a marginalised industry. It has been viewed as a dirty term, and has been a regular feature on investment exclusion lists and ignored on impact investors radars. Minexx experienced this aversion to the mining industry first hand when we tried to open a bank account in the UK. We applied to 5 banks and were turned down by each one. This was purely as the terms ‘mining’ and ‘DRC’ were core aspects of our business. Minexx is cleaning up a dirty industry, and that includes the branding.

The reality is that small-scale mining has the potential for grass roots development. Some of the largest cities on the planet, such as San Francisco and Johannesburg, were built on the mining industry. This can still hold true today- in Africa mining provides employment for ⅛  of all people and with increased reform it can become a transformational industry. Yet some activists still call for the outlawing of ASM and small-scale mining. It is the job of Minexx to rectify this negative perception of the industry and demonstrate its potential for social transformation.

When working at Bboxx, a major challenge the company faced was that very few people understood the off-grid solar market. We were primed and ready for expansion yet we felt that many of our potential investors considered our solution only as a ‘stop gap’ measure before grid electrification was possible. Once I grasped this fact, I created the‘Tomorrow's Rural Home’ prototype- a resource I could show governments, investors and customers to illustrate the potential for off-grid solutions. 

After a 200 person launch, the prototype has been visited by major aid agencies, investors and governments- the President of Togo flying to Rwanda to visit the house specifically and implemented a subsidy of off-grid solar shortly afterwards as a part of their national electrification plan. Mitsubishi, after visiting the prototype site, invested $50M in BBOXX’s vision for the future of rural electrification. 

The project has been an incredible success - after visiting guests believe in the vision and the end customer experience.  I felt that this success was the result of my ability to really get underneath the skin of my customers and audience, to build a product people love and execute on the vision.

Our project utilises blockchain technology in a unique fashion for the mining industry to meet new regulations and increase ethical practices. Current value chains in the mining industry are inefficient, with no accountability for ESG compliance, and can result in the gross mistreatment of miners. Consequently, globally we witness 21st century technology built with 19th Century practices. 

Our project’s use of blockchain technology transforms this issue. The use blockchain maintains the ethical integrity of the value chain as it takes necessary information (payment, working conditions), locks it in a digital safe and only provides the end user with the key. The nature of blockchain is such that all information is accounted for and accessible yet cannot be altered by a malicious party. This focus allows Minexx to create a direct marketplace where users can securely make digital payments, track mineral origin, detect fraud and access equipment-financing. The increased financial traceability ensures that the manufacturers can ethically source minerals. 

 Moreover, unlike many of our competitors, the platform includes blockchain certified digital payments. This guarantees that miners are paid fairly and on time. Minexx has completed the first export of minerals from DRC where all 500 miners were paid digitally and transparently. The payments are made directly to a miner’s Minexx wallet and avoids hazardous middle-men. Digital payments can have a transformative effect on quality of life as they reduce corruption by 47%. Through blockchain certification of digital payments companies’ trust and impact can be created where not previously possible.

Input- We begin by providing miners with a platform that allows them to digitally and directly access buyers and manufacturers. This cuts out undependable middlemen and gives them greater autonomy over their work. 

Output- On account of the Minexx platform, miners are paid fairly and on time. Additionally, through Minexx smart contracts, they receive access to vital services such as off-grid solar panels and health insurance that improve their quality of life. 

Short Term Outcomes- As miners are now fairly compensated they can help better support the community around them. The majority of mining receipts by artisanal miners will be spent locally, which creates a multiplier effect in the local economy and provides a range of support for local industries. This method has been shown to be one of the most successful approaches when it comes to stimulating grassroots development. Additionally, the miners have been educated on their rights and what fair practices are in the ASM industry. They can pass this information onto their colleagues and ensure that they partner with the Minexx platform to achieve a better quality of life and a fairer working environment.

Long Term Outcomes- Formalization of the ASM industry.  Up to this point, regulations surrounding mining supply chains have focused solely on large scale mining. However, the Minexx platform would help to foster new-found regulation and ethical business practices specific to ASM. Formalisation for ASM is vital as it will the industry to function at is true potential and be able to grow via foreign investment. Currently, foreign buyers and investors are becoming more hesitant to work with ASM due to labour mismanagement and the unethical treatment of workers. The industry also loses billions of dollars each year through the illegal smuggling of minerals. But, the increased level of traceability and fairness to mineral supply chains from the Minexx platform would help to increase accountability and formalize industry practices. Ultimately, formalization will provide ASM with much-needed regulatory, legal and policy frameworks to ensure maximum profitability, growth and ethical practices as standard.

In a year's time we aim to be working with 3,750 miners and in 5 years we aim to be working with 1 million miners. By 2025, we intend for these 1 million miners to have access to a 15% increase in price miner receives, for 25% of the miners to have electricity, 90% with health micro-insurance, 75% with access to head torches, and to finance 5,000 solar power water pumps & other innovations for the miners.

Elevate's support will be catalytic in enabling Minexx to scale quickly and impact mining communities around the world.

Winning the MIT Solve Prize Elevate Grant would be catalytic for our future by enabling us to develop future innovation and scale our platform. Within the next year we aim to make a Digital taxation & certification with the DRC government. We also aim to provide electricity & insurance as part of the smart contract. On the product side, we aim to develop an expansion into the cobalt mineral. To achieve this goal will help to create an environmental solutions marketplace for our miners as cobalt is an integral ingredient in battery production for eclectic and solar power. 

Within the next five years we aim to have at least 1 million miners using the platform. We hope to expand our operations to other mineral-producing countries across Africa. Our overall goal is to become the platform of choice for electronics companies and governments to source minerals responsibly from small scale mine sites. 

Our platform is created to be mineral and geography agnostic, today it could be tin in DRC but tomorrow it could be gold in Burkina Faso or Mika in India.

Educating miners is necessary but expensive: In order to deploy our transformational technology such as digital payments, blockchain and IoT we need to create a foundational educational layer to onboard miners. We educate miners on the benefits of not storing money in cash and having a digital and financial identity. This stretches the business but we understand it is a fundamental stepping stone on the road to a digitalised and inclusive extraction industry. 

Remote places that lack infrastructure: We operate in some of the most remote parts of the world. A typical mine site, is five hours by car from the city and then a sketchy two hour motorbike ride or walk - it is not easy to convince technology experts to travel to such environments. To bring frontier technologies to frontier markets is a challenge; we rely on solar electricity supply and unstable GSM networks.

Changing the status quo takes time. We are pointing the spotlight on a marginalised industry, making an opaque system transparent and creating accountability and trust where it has not existed. This takes time and resilience, there are some remarkable forward thinking players in the industry but there are also those that have profited from an opaque system and prefer the status quo. Given our experience in starting transformational businesses with a social mission we are prepared for this but require your support.

Educating miners is necessary but expensive: We have Minexx team members on the ground and local partners who can lay down the initial education and upskilling for our miners. But, we also trust that once the miners have taken these skills onboard they will help to educate their colleagues and the members of their communities. Additionally, our MineSmart digital platform means that we can provide remote educational tools to our miners. This is more cost effective as we can regularly update our educational packets without having to be on the ground ourselves.

Remote places that lack infrastructure: We have tackled this problem through implementing a process of capacity building across our mine sites. The Minexx team has used our expertise to provide technical, commercial and legal expertise to our partners. This is why grant funding such as Elevate will be so catalytic for us as we need to independently scale before we can attract commercial partners.

Changing the status quo takes time: Our leadership team has a track record of successfully scaling innovative and transformative projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our work has enabled us to develop productive relationships with governments in DRC, Rwanda and Togo. This means we can enter into this opaque industry with an existing level of trust with governments and our potential stakeholders. Attracting funding is challenging in such an industry, this is why Elevate can be catalytic to our mission to formalise an industry and connect miners to the world.

We currently have a partnership with the UK Department for International Development (DfID). We received a grant from DfID to expand our operations into Eastern DRC through their frontier technology livestreaming programme.

We are working with some international commodity traders and exploring relationships with electronics companies to provide end-to-end accountability in the system. We partner with Airtel and a selection of other local banks and mobile network operators to digitalise transactions. On the technical side, we have partnered with Finboot to enable our blockchain agnostic certificates.

Minexx provides a digital marketplace that transforms the lives of artisanal miners & formalizes financial flows for minerals buyers.

For miners we offer direct market access to get a fair price for miners, equipment finance and expertise. For mineral buyers we offer complete digitalisation and tracking of financial payments to reduce compliance burden and risks.

Minexx takes a fixed commission on transactions paid to the miner. Miners on our platform typically earn 15% more for their minerals using the Minexx fair price algorithm due to direct payment and Minexx efficiencies. 

Our path to financial sustainability lies in achieving our overall goal of becoming the platform of choice for electronics companies and governments to source minerals responsibly from small scale mine sites. 

The market is growing. The number of artisanal miners has grown four-fold in the past 20 years. With the world's insatiable appetite for electronics and rapidly increasing population growth in mineral rich countries artisanal mining, and the formalisation of it, will become a more important area for government and mineral buyers. Minexx will be driving the transition to transform lives and drive accountability within the value chain.

At the start of the year, we received grant funding from the UK government’s Department for International Development as part of the Frontier Technology Livestreaming programme. The Grant funding was $125,000.

Minexx generates revenue based on fixed commissions charged to miners to direct market access.

We intend to continue to raise funds for our project. This will be primarily via grants and equity in the business. We require $1,000,000 of investment to reach profitability at group level by 2021.

Our budget for 2020 is $700,000. This money will be used to meet expenses such as technology development and salaries.

The Elevate Campaign would be catalytic in enabling us to scale the Minexx platform. The tailored media and marketing campaign would be vital for changing existing perceptions around the potential of artisanal mining. Owing to the gross mismanagement of the industry, the general public associate ASM only with the harsh and unfair conditions miners face. Yet, at Minexx we believe that with formalisation artisanal mining can empower marginalized communities around the globe. The Elevate Prize’s focus on ‘the Global Hero’ would capture this sentiment perfectly. A miner has the potential to be a true global hero. Miners play a key role in the global move to clean energy and electronic solutions and, if given access to fair compensation, have the ability to improve the lives of their communities. 

The Elevate Prize also presents a fabulous opportunity to upskill our team members and build our network. At Minexx we believe in constantly evolving and growing our understanding of not only the mining industry but of what it takes a social enterprise to successfully scale transformative projects. Access to the prize’s professional management and development services will give us an opportunity to develop as leaders and operators in the field of social enterprise. Additionally, the dynamic network of Elevate Prize Global Heroes and partners will provide us an opportunity to work with  and learn firsthand from like minded organisations.

Currently we are seeking to bring on an electronics partner and insurance provider to work with us on the Minexx platform. This would help us to finalise our Minexx Smart Contracts that would allow us to further improve the lives of artisanal miners.

Additionally, we are looking to secure a regional telecommunications partner, such as Orange or Airtel. This would be to help aid our execution, as the blockchain-certified payments to our miners are made via mobile money transfers.