ICTworks

The digital economy is booming across Africa with multiple fintech innovations using blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and Web3 to change the way Africans interact with financial services. In fact, Africa’s crypto market increased in value by more than 1,200% between July 2020 and June 2021 led by high adoption rates in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Tanzania.

African Blockchain Innovations

Leading blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Stellar, Celo, and Cardano are regularly announcing new initiatives and racing to build Africa’s emerging Web3 economy. Here are a few activities to watch:

• Ethereum Foundation now covers 17,000 Kenyan farmers with blockchain-based crop insurance that should paying 6,000 farmers for crops adversely affected by climate change before the end of the current growing season.
• Stellar Development Foundation is launched a blockchain bootcamp with $20,000 investments, a Europe-African remittance program, and a cross-African payment app for Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda,
• Celo Foundation invested in a CFA franc stablecoin to ease payments across West Africa, a partnership with Mercy Corps Ventures to drive financial inclusion among Kenyan gig workers, equity-free grants to African projects, and 40% Africa-focused founders at its Founders in Residence program.
• Cardano outlined its vision for the continent, including investing $100 million in over 100 Kenyan pre-seed blockchain startups within three years.

It’s not just blockchain networks either. Other types of companies are investing in blockchain innovations across the continent, including:

• Carry1st, an African mobile gaming publisher, will be integrating game content with NFTs and cryptocurrencies for Web3 play-to-earn gaming.
• Chipper Cash, an African fintech unicorn, took investment from global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX to accelerate crypto adoption within Africa.
• AZA Finance, launched the continent’s first digital currency exchange, also took funding from FTX to expand the adoption of Web3 and digital currencies throughout Africa.

African Cryptocurrency Legality

All these blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and Web3 efforts are particularly surprising since cryptocurrencies are banned, explicitly or implicitly, in approximately one-half of all African countries. At the same time, an increasing number of African governments are experimenting with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). For example, Nigeria launched its e-Naira in October 2021 and South Africa is participating in the Bank for International Settlements’ multi-CBDC experiment Project Dunbar.
We’ll have to see how governments across the continent explore blockchain-based solutions and develop policy approaches to the Web3 economy. They will need to move fast. Africa had the third-fastest growing cryptocurrency economy worldwide during that period and leads the world in peer-to-peer crypto transaction volume.

That shows consumers’ insatiable demand for new blockchain networks and protocols regardless of explicit and implicit bans on cryptocurrency transactions.