Leveraging Blockchain for Transparent, Ethical, and Prosperous Mineral Supply Chains in Africa)
Africa holds some of the world’s most valuable minerals, yet the continent receives only a fraction of their true economic benefit.
The core issue is a lack of transparency and trust in the mineral supply chain.
Revenue Loss: African governments lose billions annually to illicit trade, under-declared exports, and tax evasion.
Conflict & Human Rights Abuses: “Conflict minerals” continue to fund violence and exploit vulnerable communities.
Exclusion of Artisanal Miners: Over 40 million artisanal miners cannot prove the ethical origin of their minerals, locking them out of fair global markets.
Costly Compliance: Corporations face reputational risk and spend millions on manual audits to meet ESG rules such as the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation.
This broken system keeps Africa’s wealth undervalued, unverified, and unequally distributed.
StoneProof is a blockchain-powered traceability and compliance platform built for Africa’s mineral economy.
We create a digital twin for every mineral batch and record its entire journey — from mine to export — on a tamper-proof blockchain ledger.
Immutable Traceability: Transparent, end-to-end visibility of mineral origin, movement, and ownership.
Smart Compliance: Automated ESG and regulatory reporting through Solidity smart contracts, reducing cost and human error.
Digital Provenance Passports: (Upcoming) NFT-based proof-of-origin certificates that unlock fair pricing and financial inclusion for miners.
Actionable Intelligence: On-chain analytics to support risk management, policy enforcement, and ethical sourcing verification.
StoneProof aims to restore trust in Africa’s mineral trade and ensure that the value of natural resources benefits the people closest to the ground.
By transforming minerals into verifiable digital assets, we:
Empower miners and cooperatives
Build confidence among global buyers
Support governments in protecting national economic value
Our vision:
A transparent, ethical, and prosperous African resource economy — powered by blockchain and owned by Africans.
During the ABF Hackathon, our team at Stone Proof Labs completed the full functional release of the StoneProof platform. We finalized on-chain mineral registration, traceability, and role-based access control, ensuring secure verification of minerals from source to export. We integrated MetaMask and wallet-based authentication, enabled purchases using both stablecoins and ETH, and deployed the platform live on Base L2 with smooth dashboard interaction. We also refined the user interface and delivered a full end-to-end demo showing mineral registration, ownership transfer, and transaction settlement on-chain. Our next milestone is adding NFT-based provenance certificates to represent digital proof-of-origin for global buyers.
Stone Proof Labs is a high-school-founded startup currently bootstrapped and unfunded, driven by a mission to bring transparency and trust to Africa’s mineral trade. We are actively exploring grants and early-stage funding opportunities to scale the StoneProof platform across the continent.