Browsing: Digital currencies

• Creative disruption is predominant in Africa’s orange economy.
• Emerging technologies solve several challenges, even in areas beyond the orange economy.
• Carefully mitigating risks and developing an enabling environment will be key to unlocking the potential of Web 3.0 for Africa’s orange economy.

Recent economic challenges have reminded the world and Africa of the need for economic diversification. The orange economy, otherwise known as the creative industry, is one area that has grown significantly over the last couple of years, presenting endless opportunities for Africans considering the region’s youthful population and wealth of cultural assets.

Nevertheless, comparative advantage alone might not be sufficient to capitalise on the orange economy’s emerging trends fully. It is essential to explore another emerging sector, the Web 3.0 economy, and how it can be leveraged to benefit the orange economy.

The orange economy’s susceptibility to disruptive technology

The orange economy covers various activities that can convert …

When CBDCs first came to the fore, many touted such a move as a game-changer in digital finance. Many had thought that the adoption of CBDCs in Africa would take the shape of the adoption of cryptocurrencies, where the region leads in many aspects. However, challenges remain. Lack of the requisite infrastructure, low levels of financial literacy, and operational and regulatory challenges have combined to contribute to low penetration and adoption rates for CBDCs.

The lack of adoption is a current failure point for many launched CBDCs. Nigeria’s eNaira had a million customers one year into its launch, a smattering of its 221 million population. The real challenge of CBDCs lies in developing a clear sense of purpose. African central banks must answer to the kind of role that CBDCs will play in the economy and financial systems.…

The question is, what if one day you went to pay for expenses with your card or mobile app and it returned an error message? Or was your service provider that issues your money declared bankrupt? Scary, right?
Recently, customers have been converting their regular traditional money into e-money. Service providers have enabled the transfer of electronic money to banks, from person to person, and for making payments.
For regulators and supervisors that control the protection of consumers’ e-money and digital currencies, coming up with legal bindings and restrictions in the fast-changing sector has become very challenging. These regulators and supervisors must devise ways to protect customers from a possible system failure and ultimately prevent them from losing their funds.…

Whether Nigeria and Ghana will abandon their digital currencies and jump on the Eco train is an unclear narrative, but it appears unlikely because of the significant investments put into them and the optimism by the governments to embrace digital transformations.

Nigeria had banned cryptocurrency transactions in February last year which increased the popularity of the eNaira as an alternative for cross-border trade and remittance inflows.

eNaira critics say that the solutions being offered by the digital currency are already existing in online banking and bank card transactions. …