Amidst the growth surrounding Cryptocurrency in Africa, people in this region battle with certain challenges. According to a report by Chainalysis, a Blockchain analysis company, Africa cryptocurrency dealings have risen to the top ten largest services on the continent by volume. Rising from 67 per cent in 2019 to 78 per cent in 2020.
Yet Nigeria’s central bank banned banks from offering services to cryptocurrency platforms. “Adopting was just beginning to take off in Africa, and in Nigeria specifically thing was blowing up last year”, says Buchi Okoro who is the co-founder and the CEO of Quidax, ” Trades are still happening an exchange[where] you’ll see trickles but it’s nothing close to the volumes we saw”. He stated further.
“A lot of people tweeted about banks shutting their account with funds still there because they were in one way or another facilitating a cryptocurrency transaction,” says Roselyn Wanjiru, Director of Growth and User Acquisition at Pesabase, a platform that facilitates sending and receiving money”.
Besides the lack of internet connection especially in the rural areas of Africa, another huge problem facing the adoption of cryptocurrency is a low level of financial literacy.
Many people in Africa are aware of what investing options they have. Quite a number don’t understand the basics of real estate or even stocks. “The longer it takes this information to get to the general public, especially the younger generation, the less likely they will be able to aspire to this in the first place” stated Ms Roselyn Wanjiru. “That means decentralised finance and cryptocurrency could be at risk of being extremely niche in the future”.
To ensure that cryptocurrency is integrated properly in Africa ” more needs to be done to translate this to different local language so that elder population and those who may not be in urban areas can have access to the information” Ms Wanjiru added.
In light of the fluid nature of cryptocurrency, the lack of regulation in some African countries is posing a challenge. “We have no regulatory framework. We follow the policies given to banks about things like minimum capital and transaction limit” Mr Okoro posited “But anything can happen at any point in time”.
African is still in its infancy and cryptocurrency is creating life-altering value for users in the continent
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