Today's Edition
KUUMAR SHYAM (ABU DHABI)
Born in Ethiopia, raised in the Netherlands, and now thriving as a serial entrepreneur in Dubai, Kanessa Muluneh has built a career by spotting overlooked problems and transforming them into profitable ventures.
Her latest project, Rise of Fearless, is a made-in-UAE, Africa-focused blockchain game that combines history, economic empowerment, and cutting-edge technology – and it’s already gaining traction across the continent and diaspora.
“I always knew that Africa, the Middle East, and Asia had potential,” Muluneh says. “Western media often paints a negative picture, but when you come here, you see growth, innovation, and resilience.”
Moving to Dubai three years ago was more than a change of scenery for Kanessa; it was a return to her roots. Having spent her childhood in Europe as an immigrant, she visited Ethiopia again as an adult and reconnected with her heritage in a profound way. “The smell, the feeling, the sound, the language – everything just clicked. It felt like answers to questions I didn’t even know I had,” she reflects.
That visit coincided with her networking with the UAE business community in trying to grow her fashion brand Mulu. “I saw that UAE nationals were the largest investors in Ethiopia. They taught me about the African infrastructure, how things worked – including the challenges, like hard currency shortages or delivery nightmares.”
Even if she would not have been told, she would have noticed anyways. And her solution, go digital.
Her eyes are always on the lookout for problems. After all she made her first couple of millions – the proverbial most hardest challenge – by finding a problem and solving it, all at the age of 20 in her first job as a fresh medical graduate.
At the hospital, she found that many female medical workers had to leave work to care for sick family members. She proposed a system where doctors could consult from home by redirecting hospital calls and accessing medical files remotely.
Encouraged by colleagues, she invested 8,000 euros in rerouting and file inventory. By 22, she sold that company for over €1.2 million. Her father immediately advised her to invest half of it for future and spend the other half wisely. Yet she couldn’t resist splurging away the rest, so much that she had to plead with father to dip into the saved money for paying instalments for the luxury car she had brought.
TikTok to Tech
Her medical job was only to appease her parents. But technology excited her more. Muluneh started educating others – and herself – through a TikTok account in her mother tongue. While improving her language fluency, she shared lessons on blockchain, NFTs, and crypto. That platform evolved into a successful community.
All along she began investing in small African ventures – some as little as $500 – which later developed into full-fledged businesses. Eventually, the idea emerged to build a play-to-earn game to inspire Africa’s younger generation. “They don’t want to be doctors or lawyers anymore,” she says. “They want to be content creators, business owners. We wanted to give them a platform for that.”
Muluneh found developers from the Filipino blockchain gaming community and began building her team – now more than 10 strong – in Dubai with roles spanning from game developers to marketers. “Every business I build is about marketing first. If it doesn’t sell, it’s not a business,” she emphasises.
The result: Rise of Fearless, a free-to-play, mobile-first Web3 game, deeply embedded in Ethiopian history. “The game is based on the Battle of Adwa – when Ethiopians defeated the Italians. That moment shaped the African Union,” the founder explains.
Characters wear traditional attire and resemble real Africans – a deliberate move to challenge the western-centric design in mainstream games. “Current game characters for Africans don’t look like us. This one does.”
It is not just about Ethiopia as Kanessa has launched the game in South Africa and Kenya, with plans to expand to Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Mauritius. “People say I’m limiting myself by focusing on Africa,” she says. “But Africa has 1.5 billion people – and it can connects with the population largely in Asia too.”
Rise of Fearless is built on blockchain, with plans for its own tokenomics and NFT system. Players can buy, sell, and trade in-game items – including rare NFT outfits – with real monetary value. “For example, let’s say there’s only one rainbow-colored outfit in the whole game. If your character has it and becomes popular, its value increases – just like in real markets.”
She also launched Mulu, a plus-size fashion brand that thrived during COVID. “Sales were crazy,” she says, thanks to online fitness classes and socially distanced meetups – all cleverly used to market her products. She’s now relaunching Mulu in the UAE, expanding it from plus-size to all sizes, focusing on family wear.
By the end of 2025, Kanessa aims to compete with giants like Fortnite. “That game donated $20 million in two weeks during COVID – from a free-to-play model. That’s the potential we’re looking at.”
With Rise of Fearless, she’s doing more than building a game – she’s helping build a digital economy for Africa with global potential from the confines of UAE.
