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On April 10th, The Blockchain and Crypto in Africa Panel were hosted at the African Union Representational Mission, Washington D.C. On the panel were Muse Halie, William Cunningham, and Enoch Antwi. The panel was held to describe and educate the attendees about blockchain’s core purpose, how it can be used as a tool in different industries. Lastly, the discussion captures how blockchain will change development in Africa, within the next 10–20 years.
William Cunningham started the conversation off by explaining how blockchain provides transparency in multiple industries. Cunningham is the founder of The Creative Investment Insititute which advocates for blockchain adoption alongside other emerging technologies. He mentioned, “Blockchain is very similar to an excel spreadsheet, and each row can be considered a block”. He continued to explain how bitcoin was used as a tool that allowed money to be transferred peer to peer. Bitcoin became the leading example of a blockchain and has inspired many other projects to be created off the main network bitcoin uses. Cunningham went further into detail on other platforms such as Ethereum which has been the first blockchains that allowed other projects to create a dapp (decentralized application) on the Ethereum network. He mentioned how blockchain is still developing and adoption will take time, but we must educate ourselves in the meantime because to developing world is rapidly growing. William Cunningham closed his statement with how social control is the way societies are being controlled, but using tools like cryptocurrencies can help people work with other peers seamlessly.
Next, that spoke was Muse Halie a blockchain consultant with a focus on security management. Halie has worked on multiple projects for the past 6 years deploying smart contracts in multiple African countries. He has worked closely with Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia attempting to educate Africans on using blockchain to assist with cross border payments and supply chain management. Halie spoke on how digital currencies have existed in Africa longer than bitcoin has been around for, such as the mPesa which was created in Kenya in 2007. When cryptocurrencies entered Africa, many people used bitcoin for cross border payments to avoid remittance fees, but gaining access to crypto became the major problem. Another major issue that Halie mentioned is that scams and untrustworthy actors have created a negative stigma in Kenya. He mentioned, “In Kenya, citizens have invested 1.8 billion dollars that have been comprised of pyramid schemes”. This created fear and caused the government to temporally restrict the use of crypto. Halie mentioned how blockchain can assist African nations to build core infrastructures such as KYC, Biometric systems for healthcare and identity, farming supply chain management, and cross border payment systems. MPesa is used by 90% of Kenyans and the central bank only controls 10% of the money supply and is a growing force also used in other African countries. Halie mentioned how many African leaders want to use blockchain but will be skeptical if it can disrupt their power structures.
Last on the panel was Enoch Antwi founder of the North Rock Group, which focuses on trading electronic derivatives and natural resources. Enoch spoke on how Africans need to work on a payment solution and payment processes that can work across borders that can be traded for multiple African currencies. He mentioned multiple barriers such as many users and use cases for bitcoin in Africa but accessibility issues causing frustrations. He mentioned projects such as Interswitch founded in Nigeria that focuses on Supply chain payment processors. The commodities markets create the prices for goods and services in Africa, but they still are not controlled by Africans, using blockchain can help people gain the proper value for goods and services. Land registries are a large use case for many African countries allowing trusted centralized ledgers to actively create digital land titles. Enoch mentioned how stable coins will challenge the central bank infrastructure in many African countries, but we have to educate the governments about the benefits. Enoch closed off with explained the importance of educating our countries of this technology because if we do not they will ban them out of fear. A continental wide regulation that is sponsored by the African Union could help push the agenda forward.
(Another report also found here: http://twisri.blogspot.com/2019/04/blockchain-cryptocurrency-and-africa-by.html?m=1)