Blockchain’s big potential in Africa
At the beginning of March, some of the brightest minds from the blockchain world joined representatives from the financial, legal, and global technology industries to discuss widespread blockchain adoption. But the event wasn’t held in fintech hub London, or startup mecca San Francisco. It was in Johannesburg, South Africa, at the fourth edition of the Blockchain Africa conference hosted at the Microsoft HQ.
The majority of African states are still considered developing nations and have been held back by legacies of colonialism, resulting in problems such as armed conflicts, corruption, and poverty. But the blockchain ecosystem in many places is already starting to garner strength and has the potential to make a huge impact on African economies and societies.
While African tech ecosystems may not get the attention they deserve, the region is home to a number of emerging blockchain and crypto communities, and local players are using blockchain technology to tackle social, economic, and political problems – and as a launch pad into global markets.
While still in their early growth stages compared to the crypto hubs in central and eastern Europe and Switzerland, blockchain communities in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and Sudan are growing steady.
BitHub Africa, based in Nairobi, is a blockchain accelerator for local startups founded in December 2015. The organization provides consulting services for organizations interested in deploying blockchain solutions across Africa and the Middle East and also helps local blockchain startups hit the ground running. The organization has a hyper-focus on incubating micro-lending startups. It also engages with local regulators to advocate for the adoption of blockchain in Kenya’s tech policy and for favorable regulations for ICOs and cryptocurrencies.
In South Africa, theBlockchain Academyin Cape Town provides training on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to local startups and entrepreneurs and advises local businesses on how to best adopt blockchain technology into their business models. The organization also offers training at the AlphaCode Club in Johannesburg.
The Blockchain Academy is working closely with local financial institutions and counts representatives from Barclays Africa, Standard Bank, and the Central Bank of Swaziland as former alumni. Blockchain is especially topical in the financial sector in South Africa, since the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), the country’s central bank, launched a new FinTech initiative with crypto startup ConsenSys based on enterprise blockchain Quorum.
Other smaller scale groups have emerged in Sudan, where crypto meetups and events started popping up back in 2015, and have since grown into larger, more active communities thanks to the cohesive power of social media groups — in particular Facebook. A number of blockchain-related businesses have also begun to take root in the country, including blockchain development company Codexi, and blockchain-based gold mining enterprise SG Mining, which backs its cryptocurrency with gold assets.
In Lagos, Nigeria, the first Nigeria Blockchain Alliance Conference was held in November 2017. According the Bitcoin Africa.io, Nigeria’s blockchain community has experienced considerable growth over the past two years, seeing the launch of a number of new blockchain startups, and the CDIN initiative, which aims to inform and educate Nigerians about the potential benefits of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. To top it off, Nigerian Blockchain startup SureRemit just raised the largest African ICO to date — $8 million for its non-cash remittance platform.
To date, blockchain adoption has been sporadic across Africa, but the emerging use cases are tackling real social, economic, and political problems affecting hundreds of millions of people every day:
Fighting corruption.
