Dipo Olowookere
While many prominent experts call the African continent one of the most promising for the future of the cryptomarket, the numbers so far are not convincing. But what makes it so interesting and how do people in Africa actually use cryptocurrencies in 2021?
What makes Africa such a promising market
The report “The Stare of Crypto Africa” calls the region “one of, if not the most promising region for the adoption of cryptocurrencies”. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, tweets that “Africa will define the future” of the whole crypto industry.
At the same time, Africa is still the smallest economy by the total value of transactions in the world: with over 1.2 billion population it accounts only for 2% of the global value transacted in cryptocurrencies. So how does being the smallest economy in transactional volume in crypto blend with being one of the most promising regions?
The first answers can be derived from a recent Chainalysis report that states that only in one year, from July 2020 to June 2021, the African crypto-economy had grown over 1200%. Moreover, some countries in the region like Kenya or Nigeria are among the top 20 of the Global Adoption Index.
As researchers from Arcane put it, the African market’s success сan be attributed to “the unique combination of economic and demographic trends”. One of the drivers of its uniqueness is the fact that, according to different estimates, 57% to 66% of the population has no such thing as a simple bank account.
The situation forces people to look for alternatives and that is why such countries as Kenya and Nigeria are among the countries with the highest adoption rate of cryptocurrencies. In the end, due to the lack of the infrastructure affordable for the majority of citizens, people adapted and now they “have no problems with mastering new technologies”, as Sergey Ordin, marketing director of the international crypto community Roy Club with representative offices in Africa, puts it.
He also shared that “remarkably high interest towards innovative financial opportunities with low entry levels” shows in the Roy Club members statistics: however the offices in Africa opened their doors in 2021, the number of its participants is already 15% of all members at a global level (approximately 100 000 out of 700 000)
Use cases: From cutting transactional costs to financial independents
With most of the population unbanked and the fact that cross-border payments in Africa cost on average more than at any other main continent (per the World Bank, up to 8.9% per transaction while the global average is 6.8), there is no surprise that remittance payments became the most popular use case for cryptocurrencies.
Remittance payments volume has been steadily growing for the last couple of years. Per Chainalysis, it has grown 10 times from April 2019 to April 2021, for example. Also, with time, not only individuals but businesses started to use cryptocurrencies for doing international business in some areas. Artur Schaback, the confounder of the popular in Africa P2P exchange Paxful illustrated this point with an example:
“If you’re working with a partner in China to import goods to sell in Nigeria or Kenya, it can be hard to send enough fiat currency to China to complete your purchases. It’s often easier to just buy Bitcoin locally on a P2P exchange and then send it to your partner”
The situation drastically changed in the middle of 2020 when stay-home policies and other restrictions became a catalyst for exploring other use cases for cryptocurrencies. There is no surprise that when the pandemic worsened the situation with national currencies that had high devaluation rates even before 2020 people started to preserve their savings by using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For example, in Nigeria, Chainalysis shows the correlation between the peaks of the devaluation of Naira, the local currency, and trading volumes on P2P platforms with this currency.
Also, 2020 inevitably worsened the situation with employment. Young people who are in general more well-versed in new technologies in a moment with growing unemployment and uncertainty opted to use cryptocurrencies as a source of income. Buchi Okoro, the CEO of the African crypto exchange Quidax, shared that a high proportion of the users of the exchange use cryptocurrencies “to earn a living”. And indeed, those who invested in bitcoin, for example, in March 2020 at a price of $6500 definitely succeeded making 900% profits by March 2021 when the bitcoin price was already $60000.
Now, when the bitcoin price growth is slowing down, another way to earn a living becomes more and more popular in Africa – staking. Staking is in many ways similar to mining since it involves users in performing such network functions as block validation with two main exceptions: it does not require expensive equipment and there is no need to acquire special skills. Staking is the mechanism of getting profit from owning cryptocurrencies that work on the Proof-of-Work algorithms and putting them on hold for some time.
Since P2P platforms are also very popular in Africa, the idea of sharing with the community is no stranger there. That is probably why staking pools became so popular. They work in the following way: members of the community pool their resources together to increase their chances for a good profit. For example, at Roy Club, according to Ordin, staking pools bring their members from 5% (for pools with 50,000 UMI) to 40% (for pools with over 1 billion UMI) monthly.
Moreover, the people’s readiness to adopt new technologies is coupled with their readiness to learn. Sergey Odin specifically highlighted the significant local interest in educational products like Roy School and Roy Academy that offer courses for both novices and advanced users free of charge.
To conclude, while the transactional volume is still tiny compared with other economies, the African continent has all chances to define the future of the crypto market with current growth rates and the readiness of its population to learn and adopt new technologies. While people immediately noticed that cryptocurrencies are useful for cutting costs of remittance payments, with time they also started to see a chance for financial independence and additional income in more complex products, like staking.
