LIST | Here Are the 6 African Bitcoin Developers Awarded Q3 2025 Grants by B-Trust

In October 2025, Btrust announced that six exceptional African open-source developers have been awarded grants under its Q3 2025 initiative. These recipients comprise four “Starter Grant” awardees and two long-term “Open-Source Cohort” grantees.

Starter Grant Recipients

These developers are all graduates of Btrust’s Builders pathways, which prepare engineers for meaningful contributions in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

• Rita Anene (Nigeria) – A software engineer with experience in financial and logistics applications, Rita pivoted to Bitcoin development in 2025. She has worked on Warnet (a Bitcoin Testnet simulation tool) and LDK Node (a Lightning implementation). With the grant, she’ll focus on improving transaction lifecycle management, payment tracking, storage optimization in LDK Node, and enhancing plugin configuration in Warnet.
• Ojok Emmanuel Nsubuga (Uganda) – Former engineering lead at Ridelink and participant in Btrust Builders’ bootcamp. He has contributed to BlueWallet by fixing bugs, refactoring code, and mentoring new contributors. With his grant, he will work full-time on migrating BlueWallet from JavaScript to TypeScript, improving reproducible builds for F-Droid, reducing dependencies, and enhancing the Silent Payments library to align with Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs).
• Abiodun Awoyemi (Nigeria) – Skilled in Rust, TypeScript, Solidity and zero-knowledge proofs, Abiodun has contributed to the BitcoinDevKit and the Rust Bitcoin ecosystem. His grant will support six key improvements in Bitcoin Dev Kit including flexible RBF transaction construction, cross-wallet interoperability, API improvements, security hardening workflows, and educational materials (tutorials, blog posts, videos) to help bring other developers on board.
• Chukwudi “Chuks” Agbakuru (Nigeria) – With 8+ years of software engineering experience, Chuks has contributed to LDK, LDK-Node and SimLN, and is building PeepsWire (a video-calling app powered by Lightning micro-payments). Under this grant he will finalise support for BIP 353 (Human-Readable Names) in LDK Node, extend SimLN to support LDK Node, and build advanced simulation features—while mentoring new contributors in the community.

Long-Term (Open-Source Cohort) Grant Recipients

These awards support sustained contributions from developers who have already demonstrated significant impact.

• Itoro Ukpong (Nigeria) – A seasoned developer with seven years of professional experience and a strong track record in Bitcoin open-source. During his starter grant he merged 16 PRs, reviewed 30+, and helped improve the devkit wallet sample app. Now he will lead the API surface for BDK-FFI in the upcoming version 3.0, enhance PSBT support, build a robust testing suite with regtest integrations, advance Miniscript descriptor support, and author the Android portion of the “Book of BDK” to guide other developers.
• Oghenovo “Novo” Usiwoma (Nigeria) – A full-time Bitcoin Core open-source developer focused on privacy and performance. His previous work includes implementing Silent Payments, optimizing Schnorr batch verification, and enhancing libmultiprocess in Bitcoin Core. With this renewal of his long-term grant, Novo will continue to drive privacy-preserving features and protocol-level performance improvements.

Building the Ecosystem

All six grantees are alumni of the Btrust Builders program, underscoring the organization’s commitment to nurturing talent in Africa and fostering sustainable careers in Bitcoin open-source development.

Btrust encourages other developers passionate about contributing to Bitcoin to apply for grants year-round. Applications remain open, and new recipients will be announced quarterly.

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