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The resounding success of blockchain illustrates the subversive and revolutionary power of the most whimsical ideas: initially created as the solution to an almost insoluble challenge, namely enabling reliable transactions in the absence of any trust between the parties to the exchange, blockchain is set to transform the individual's place in the economic machine. By eliminating intermediaries, blockchain makes everyone their own banker, notary, financial intermediary, and enables the invention of previously unthinkable business models.
Financial transactions, supply chains, micropayments, corporate governance, investment in art and luxury: all these sectors are just a fraction of the areas where blockchain is transforming practices. This is even more evident in emerging markets, characterized by a strong capacity to integrate any technological leap offering an immediate advantage.
In Africa, the low rate of banking, logistical difficulties, sometimes piecemeal cadasters, the slowness of cross-border payments, and problems related to the census of citizens for access to public services, are all sectors where blockchain provides clear solutions.
The general public's familiarization with blockchain typically comes through cryptocurrencies, whose development has facilitated remote payments, access to individual loans, fundraising, to name just a few uses. The success of cryptocurrencies is such that the African continent has become its third-largest market, with an adoption rate of 1200% between July 2020 and June 2021, according to figures from the Swiss investment firm CV VC's report, "The African Blockchain Report 2021."
This phenomenon is particularly visible in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria, the first African country to launch a central bank digital currency, the e-naira, in October 2021. The Central Bank of Nigeria expects that the adoption of this technology should result in a GDP increase of 29 billion dollars over the next ten years.
Initially viewed as a technology that could shake traditional institutions and the authority of the state, blockchain has now become an auxiliary of public life, both accelerating administrative procedures, significantly increasing financial inclusion and access to public services, and energizing economies by creating new categories of jobs wherever synergies between blockchain, artificial intelligence, automation, and digitization of exchanges allow the emergence of new services and require the establishment of new infrastructures.
The blockchain sector in Africa already shows the acceleration of the phenomenon, with a year-on-year investment increase of 1668% between the first halves of 2021 and 2022, from 5 million dollars in 2021 to 91 million a year later, with Nigeria, Seychelles, Kenya, and South Africa leading the way. Whether in fintech, decentralized exchanges, NFT marketplaces, protocol providers, software developers, and miners, the continent already has many effective and promising players.
However, for blockchain to truly take off in Africa, three conditions must be met: access to digital technology, securing transactions, and the existence of a regulatory framework that is both flexible for businesses and generates trust for users.
For now, few countries explicitly allow cryptocurrencies, and even fewer have given them a legal status and a favorable regulatory development framework.
For more on this topic: Forbes Afrique I Cryptomonnaies I La régulation supplante progressivement la prohibition