How Utabiri works
Utabiri is a prediction market for African news: elections, football, currencies, culture and tech. You back the outcomes you believe in with free virtual coins, and the crowd's combined bets turn into live odds.
Everything uses virtual coins. They're free, you can't buy them, and they can't be turned into money. It's a game of forecasting skill.
1What is a prediction market?
It's a market where people trade on questions about the future, like "Will a Kenyan man win the New York City Marathon?" Each possible answer has a price between 0 and 1 coin. That price is the crowd's estimate of how likely it is. A YES price of 0.40 means traders think there's about a 40% chance.
If you think the crowd is wrong, you trade. When you think something is more likely than its price, buy it. When the event is decided, every correct share pays out 1 coin and every wrong share pays nothing. People who spot the truth early are rewarded, which makes the odds sharper for everyone.
2Reading a market
- Yes / No markets show one big number: the chance of YES. NO is always the rest (e.g. 40% YES = 60% NO).
- Multiple-choice markets (like "Who will win AFCON 2027?") list every outcome with its own chance. They always add up to 100%.
- The chart shows how the odds have moved as people traded.
- The resolution rules say exactly how and from which source the answer will be decided. Read them before you trade.
3Buying, selling and getting paid
Choose an outcome, enter how many coins to spend, and you'll see how many shares you get and what you'd win before you confirm. For example, at a 40% chance, spending 10 on YES gets you about 23 shares. If YES happens, they pay23, a profit of 13.
Try it: buying YES
- You get
- 44.05 shares
- If YES happens
- 44.05
- If NO happens
- 0
Your purchase moves the chance from 40% to 51%. The bigger the bet, the more the price moves, so each extra share costs a little more.
- Prices move when people trade. Buying an outcome makes it more expensive; selling makes it cheaper. There's no need to find someone on the other side: the market always quotes a price.
- You can sell any time before the market closes, to lock in a profit or cut a loss. You get the current price for your shares.
- When the market resolves, correct shares pay 1 each, straight into your balance, and you get a notification (and an email, if you've turned those on).
- If a market can't be decided fairly, it's cancelled and everyone gets back the coins they put in.
4Earning coins
Every new account gets 1,000 coins after confirming its email.
Claim a free weekly bonus from the top bar, once every 7 days.
The three traders with the biggest profit on each market win bonus coins when it resolves.
Propose a market with the Suggest button. If we publish it, you get credit and 100 coins.
5Everything you can do
- Trade on politics, sport, the economy, culture and tech across Africa.
- Climb the leaderboard, ranked by net worth (coins plus the value of open bets) or prizes won.
- Track your bets on your portfolio and show off your record on your public profile.
- Share markets, your picks and your rank on WhatsApp and X. Links show a live preview of the odds.
- Propose markets about things you care about.
- Get notified on your phone or by email when your markets settle or you win a prize. Install Utabiri to your home screen for an app-like experience.
6Tips for new forecasters
- Trade when you disagree with the odds, not just on what you hope will happen.
- Start small. Big bets move the price against you, especially on quiet markets.
- Spread your coins across several markets instead of going all-in on one.
- Update as news breaks. Selling early is often smarter than waiting.
7Fair play
One account per person, 18+. Using several accounts to move prices or funnel prizes breaks the rules, and we reset or remove accounts that do. See the Terms & Privacy for the details.