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Business

IMF Expresses Concern About Central African Republic’s Adoption Of Bitcoin

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that the Central African Republic’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender presents a series of challenges for the country. This comes after the country announced that it adopted bitcoin as legal tender last week.


The decision has so far drawn criticism from opposition parties in the country and Banque des États de l’Afrique Centrale (BEAC), the Central Bank which manages the fiat currency used by 6 countries.

“The adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in C.A.R raises major legal, transparency, and economic policy challenges. IMF staff are assisting the regional and Central African Republic’s authorities in addressing the concerns posed by the new law.” The Fund mentioned in an email to Bloomberg.

On the other hand, The Central African Republic insists that adopting bitcoin will spur its economic recovery and growth and stabilize the country, which was wracked by the civil war.

At the moment, the Central African Republic ranks 188 out of 189 on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index. The 2.3 billion dollar economy will expand to 5.1% this year, according to the African Development Bank.

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Business

Kenya’s Largest State Energy Company, to Supply Clean Energy for Bitcoin Mining

KenGen, Kenya’s largest power generating company, has been approached by several cryptocurrency mining companies to establish a base at the company’s upcoming energy park.

Crypto mining is the process of creating new crypto coins through the solution of exceedingly difficult math problems that verify bitcoin transactions. The miner receives a predefined amount of bitcoin when a bitcoin is successfully mined.

According to a local article, the crypto enterprises are among a list of businesses that require a lot of energy and wish to use KenGen’s geothermal power producing hub in Olkaria, Naivasha, Kenya’s rift valley.

Peketsa Mwangi, Acting Director, Geothermal Development at KenGen is quoted saying:

“We’ll have them here because we have the space and the power is near, which helps with stability. Their power requests vary, some of them had asked to start with 20MW to be later graduated…crypto mining is very energy-intensive.”

He did not divulge how many companies have expressed interest, but he did say that their power requests began at 20 megawatts (MW). An energy park, sometimes known as an industrial park, is a separate area used and intended for clean energy development, such as wind and solar producing facilities, according to KenGen.

The company announced in February 2022 that it had completed plans for the energy park, which would take advantage of the reasonably cost geothermal steam.

The park will have industrial, commercial, and recreational facilities and will be built in two phases, with the first phase expected to be completed in 2022.

KenGen currently provides over 72 percent of Kenya’s electricity, with over 80 percent of that coming from renewable sources. The company’s total installed generation capacity is 1,818MW, with 713.13MW (39.2%) coming from geothermal, 825.69MW (45.3%) from hydro, 253.5MW (14.1%) from thermal, and 25.5MW from wind (1.4 percent ).

One of the most common criticisms of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been the high need for electricity during mining, which has raised concerns about the environmental impact.

Sourced from BiTKE

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Business

Thanks to Luno’s sponsorship, the Sunshine Tour is the first to provide prize money in Bitcoin

Thanks to a partnership from prominent crypto business Luno, the Sunshine Tour, a South African men’s professional golf tour, is the first to offer prizes in cryptocurrency.

Luno is the official crypto investment partner of the Sunshine Tour and the new sponsor of the Luno Order of Merit. The leading golfer will get R500,000 in Bitcoin from the Luno Order of Merit, while the second-ranked golfer will receive R200,000 in Bitcoin and the third-ranked golfer will receive R100,000 in Bitcoin.

Marius Reitz, Luno’s General Manager for Africa, said: “Luno is focused on empowering people by building a new financial system that is easily accessible, meets the challenge of a constantly evolving world, and which is more suited to the digital age. We are the facilitators of a new way of thinking about money. Professional golfers have a very different way of thinking about risk and reward, both on and off the golf course. We are delighted to partner with the Sunshine Tour as this thinking aligns perfectly with our vision to put the power of crypto in everyone’s hands by making it safe and easy to buy, store and learn about crypto.”

The order of merit format shifted from a money-based system to a points-based ranking system, on 2 May 2022. Thomas Abt, Commissioner of the Sunshine Tour, said the points-based ranking system is more internationally recognized. 

“We are constantly evolving for the benefit of our member professionals. The Luno Order of Merit perfectly encapsulates the value we place on evolving golf systems and pioneering initiatives that appeal to our younger golfing audience.”

Points will be allocated according to the tournament prize money on offer as follows:

Tier 1 tournament (prize money up to R2 000 000): 2,000 points.

Tier 2 tournament (prize money between R2 000 001 and R5 999 999): 4,000 points.

Tier 3 tournament (prize money between R6 000 000 and R10 000 000): 6,000 points.

Tier 4 tournament (prize money between R10 000 001 and R19 999 999): 10,000 points.

Tier 5 tournament (prize money of R20 000 000 or more): 12,000 points.

As of March 2022, an estimated 300 million people worldwide were utilizing cryptocurrency, a number that is likely to rise as global markets acquire better access to the crypto ecosystem. With client growth of nearly 40% year over year, South Africa is one of Luno’s strongest and most active markets.

“Luno allows customers to buy crypto for as little as R1. We encourage people to start small using a credible platform and learn about crypto on our free learning portal,” says Reitz.

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Social Good

Web3Ladies and FTX Africa Team Up for the #WomenWhoCrypto Campaign.

On May 4th, leading cryptocurrency exchange FTX and Web3Ladies announced a collaboration to drive the adoption and onboarding of African women into the crypto space. The project has been branded as the #WomenWhoCrypto campaign and will focus on the role of education.

FTX announcement of Web3Ladies collaboration

FTX is a multinational cryptocurrency exchange built by traders offering innovative products for all kinds of users, including tokenized stocks, prediction markets and leveraged tokens. In less than 3 years, the exchange has grown to become one of the most revered with over a million users and an average daily trading volume of $10 billion.

Web3Ladies is an African network working to empower the next generation of blockchain industry female leaders to grow their knowledge, engage,  build, nurture, and develop a sustainable web3 space. This made them a perfect vessel for the #WomenWhoCrypto campaign. 

FTX Africa Business Development Manager, Adebayo Juwon said FTX Africa is delighted to work with Web3Ladies on this campaign and is quoted saying, “We are strong believers in education, and we have been actively collaborating and engaging in dialogue with players in the ecosystem. This partnership is no different.” 

According to Oluchi Enebeli, the Founder of Web3Ladies, their network has been actively creating programs and events to equip women with the skills they need to tap into opportunities in the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency space. 

The goal of the #WomenWhoCrypto campaign is to give aspiring tech enthusiasts a fighting chance to become innovators and players that can compete favourably in the global tech ecosystem. 

As FTX strives to become the most innovative exchange in the industry with a powerful platform for all kinds of users, this move puts them in the lead as the first crypto exchange platform to launch a blockchain adoption campaign targeted at African women.

The campaign will feature a weekly Twitter Space that will be jointly hosted by FTX Africa and Web3Ladies. These chats would focus on educating young women about the opportunities in the web3 space and how to take advantage of the opportunities that crypto provides. 

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Business

How Binance is Building Beyond Blockchain in Cameroon.

Binance is now the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and blockchain ecosystem widening financial access for Africans. However, many Africans are stuck in the poverty trap due to a number of excluding factors beyond access to financial services. Let’s look at some of the efforts by Binance to bridge this gap specifically in Cameroon.

1. Education

Education is considered the key to escaping poverty by many and Binance is determined to provide lifelong financial and career development resources to crypto beginners.

With multiple events held to educate enthusiasts about the opportunities within the crypto space, the company is committed to showing how to make a living from crypto. Binance is also uncompromising in its commitment to ensuring that crypto fans are well-informed and do not fall prey to rogue actors or frauds.

Binance has educated over 541,000 Africans about cryptocurrency through the Binance Masterclass Education Series that was launched in January 2020. There have been both virtual and physical events for French-speaking Africans.

There is no shortage of testimonies and an attendee of a Binance event held on December 4th 2021 in Cameroon is quoted saying “I entered the cryptocurrency field by chance six months ago on the advice of a friend. But until now, I still didn’t master the workings of this technology.” 

Séverin Kouam continued his testimony adding, “This training is very welcome since it allows me to better understand how it works, the benefits but most importantly the risks involved in cryptocurrency so that I don’t get fooled while investing my money.”

Binance regularly partners with local businesses to train, support and empower Africans and their businesses. The most recent partnership has seen the launch of a monthly training program to serve as a Crypto Academy in the four countries of Cameroon, Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast. 

2. Provision of Financial Opportunities

Binance is creating new job opportunities through regular skills training and the provision of services that are enabling Cameroonians to remain employable globally and climb out of poverty. 

The company regularly hosts boot camps and hackathons to show Africans the range of career opportunities available in the crypto space. Here students get to work on real-time projects where they apply the skills they have gained in the training.

With self-reliance and job creation as the goal, Binance has created opportunities for meaningful employment as some of these students have gone on to become employed in the workforce, build their own companies, start crypto trading and do a lot more.

The job opportunities begin within the company itself right from its platform; Binance has provided income opportunities for users who signed up and were accepted for Binance P2P Merchant Program.

Merchants provide liquidity for buyers or sellers on the platform and can make a living right from the comfort of their homes by completing multiple trades per day and making profits on each trade. 

Binance P2P is a safe platform to conduct crypto trades with a robust security framework to ensure users enjoy a safe and secure crypto experience.

3. Ensuring Security & User Protection

User safety is a top priority when dealing with crypto and this is evident in Binance’s activities and community interactions. On Binance P2P, there are security updates, verified merchants and user security initiatives.in place to protect its users and ensure that fraudulent activity is prevented. 

Binance constantly educates its users on safety and security protocols and was also one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to introduce a secure fund (SAFU) with a value of $1 billion as a safety net for users in extreme cases.

This fund was first established in 2018 with the company allocating 10% of all trading fees to provide insurance for potential security breaches. Binance will continue to monitor the size of the security fund in order to ensure the fund size remains adequate to protect users’ interests.

Protection mechanisms such as Know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering measures and account restrictions have been put in place to ensure that users are protected from scams.

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Business

Yellow Card suspends mobile money withdrawals in Uganda

Yellow Card, an American Fintech has since 2019 supported Ugandans that needed to get onto the new financial train of crypto, offering them the most secure web and app-based wallets to trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether in Uganda. Trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether in Uganda had grown tremendously as more people had become more interested in the crypto trade than ever before. 

However last week on Saturday, the Central Bank of Uganda issued a circular to all its licensees warning against converting crypto into mobile money and vice versa. For platforms like Yellow Card whose main goal was to offer Ugandans an opportunity to make money through crypto trading, this is a major setback as it means that operations have been limited.

On Wednesday, yellow card passed on personal messages to their customers, alerting them that mobile money withdrawals have been disabled because of the Bank of Uganda circular. 

At the moment, those that still have their crypto funds on the platform cannot withdraw through mobile money and can only use their banks and yet the transactions take three to four days. This has left some customers disgruntled and complaining that it was easier to withdraw and deposit using mobile money since it only took a day.     

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Business

TON Adds Option to Send Cryptocurrency on Telegram

Two years after abandoning its blockchain endeavor, the Open Network (TON) foundation, an engineering networking group, has announced that users will be able to send crypto payments on Telegram.

Telegram’s cryptocurrency operation was shut down when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States imposed excessive pressure on the company. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai created TON in 2018. The SEC ordered Telegram to cease its sales of Gram, a token related to the TON blockchain, a year after the project was established, claiming that it had failed to register the $1.7 billion in sales received as part of its pre-ICO. Telegram, on the other hand, abandoned the token in the year 2020. After dropping its old blockchain operation, the WhatsApp competitor was able to launch a new coin and rename it Toncoin.

Telegram now accepts Toncoin transactions with no costs, according to a tweet from TON.

“I’m proud that the technology we created is alive and evolving… TON is still years ahead of everything else in the blockchain realm,” Durov said 

Earlier in April, the TON project was able to receive $1 billion in donations.

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Business

Could Bitcoin Adoption See CAR out of the regional CFA?

Following the Central African Republic’s announcement to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender reported here, there have been many questions about how the cryptocurrency will be adopted in the relatively poor country. 

The Regional Bank of Central African States (BEAC), which is the authority that issues the Central African Franc that is to function alongside Bitcoin in CAR has not yet made its position clear on the Bitcoin adoption by the Central African state, having allegedly been blindsided by the move. 

The CAR government statement from Wednesday 27th April claimed the move to adopt Bitcoin made the country one of the world’s “most visionary countries” but it still remains to be seen how the vision is to be realized given the infrastructural problems in the country. 

The DataReportal website estimates that the Central African Republic has an internet penetration rate of just 11% amounting to about 550,000 people online last year. At the same time, only around 14% of people have access to electricity and less than half of these have a mobile phone connection according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Bitcoin usage heavily relies on relatively fast and reliable internet and devices that run on electricity so a look at the CAR infrastructure numbers does not paint the brightest picture for the developing country. 

Analysts and crypto experts have said that great challenges lie ahead in adopting Bitcoin in one of the world’s poorest countries with low internet use, widespread conflict, spotty electricity and a population mostly unfamiliar with crypto.

With a population of 4.8 million people, the African country was the world’s second to turn to Bitcoin following El Salvador. By the time El Salvador announced their Bitcoin adoption in June 2021, the country already had a small but growing community of crypto users but internet issues still hindered widespread commercial use. 

US blockchain researcher Chainalysis, which tracks crypto usage, had no data on the Central African Republic, which has been gripped for years by violence and is home to Russian mercenaries who have been helping the government overcome rebel groups since 2018.

Nathan Hayes, an analyst at Economist Intelligence Unit spoke about the adoption saying, “Given the enormous barriers to adoption and risks associated with use, and seemingly limited upsides, we do not expect widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies in the country.” 

In light of the clear challenges that exist, a developing theory for why CAR is adopting Bitcoin is that the move is meant to send a message rebuking the regional Central African Franc (CFA). 

The CFA  is used by six states i.e. Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. The currency is governed by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) and is pegged to the Euro.

The BEAC has an arrangement where it must maintain at least 50% of foreign assets with the French treasury but this has been criticized as a barrier that is holding back economic development. 

CAR’s crypto move “reflects regional disquiet over the use of the CFA franc, with its colonial overtones,” Rahul Shah, head of financials equity research at Tellimer, said.

This apparent condemnation of the CFA was not lost on members of the crypto community and CEO of crypto exchange Yellow Card Financial, Chris Maurice is quoted as saying the move is “ a big middle finger to the French economic system.”

Yellow Card has over a million users in 16 African countries including a license to operate in the CFA area. It is on this background that the CEO was confident in adding that “Central Africa is extremely far behind in terms of development.” 

In January, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged El Salvador to do away with its move to make Bitcoin legal tender and continues to voice caution on the Central African Republic’s move.

“You have to make sure that the legislative framework, in terms of the transparency of financial flows, the governance framework around it is all robustly in place.”

Speaking at a press briefing on its economic outlook for sub-Saharan Africa, IMF Africa department director Abebe Aemro Selassie pointed out the importance of not seeing such tech as a quick cure-all for economic challenges countries face as we continue to monitor the situation around the Central African Republic.

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Business Technology

Blockchain Firm Stratis to Bankroll Ugandan Innovation Center.

Blockchain firm Stratis has started a new partnership with King Oyo, the ruling monarch in the Tooro Kingdom of Uganda, aimed at providing beneficial features on the Stratis blockchain to the people in Uganda.

Stratis is a company focusing on how blockchain can streamline business processes while reducing the complexities affecting blockchain adoption and implementation. On this crusade, the UK-based company was initially targeting financial institutions but expanded to allow any business interested in adopting Blockchain to benefit. 

The Stratis team builds a platform and offers consulting services to businesses that may need guidance in working with Blockchain technology. They also work with clients in developing decentralized applications to help meet their smart contract needs.

The company has put significant effort into ensuring that even developers without previous blockchain experience can pick up and become proficient with blockchain technology as quickly as possible. 

In line with this effort, Stratis is collaborating with King Oyo’s charitable foundation on new blockchain use cases that can better the administration of the Tooro Kingdom. A particular interest is being put in the agricultural sector as the main economic activity within the Kingdom and Uganda as a whole country.

Stratis will set up an innovation centre within the kingdom as part of an agreement to build blockchain development skills and NFT knowledge. This is all part of a bigger plan by the company to deploy lead teams with technical skills to elevate blockchain development across the continent.

King Oyo spoke enthusiastically about the partnership saying, “Blockchain technologies offer new approaches to organizing societies and increasing efficiencies. In the Tooro Kingdom, we see that the immutability of blockchain has significant potential, for example, for use cases within agriculture, logistics, banking and many more. I’m excited to be working with Stratis to further knowledge and understanding across the kingdom.”

The knowledge developed at this innovation centre will form the specifically designed syllabus that will be transmitted to the masses. The syllabus will focus on the use of Stratis Blockchain technologies while working on existing development tools, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio.

The founder and CEO of Stratis, Chris Trew is quoted speaking on the partnership saying, “We view this investment as the beginning of Stratis Africa and plan to deploy a senior team to Uganda. King Oyo is taking a forward-thinking stance on innovation that will bring new economic opportunities to the Tooro Kingdom.”

Having such an innovation centre helps to close the knowledge gap that remains a significant barrier to the growing popularity of decentralized finance and Web3 projects in Uganda. Misconceptions that leave many as easy targets for scammers can also be addressed here to maintain security as a digital priority.

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Blockchain Business

Blockchain paves the way for social good in Zambia

Social responsibility and blockchain adoption are two concepts that can coexist. That is exactly what Zambia’s United Africa Blockchain Association (UABA) is emphasizing by promoting blockchain adoption in Africa. This is going to be done through partnerships and networks that provide life-changing blockchain projects for example educational programs that equip individuals and organizations with skills and networks that are needed to create blockchain-based solutions. 

Its most recent successful awareness campaign took place in Zambia in February. The primary UABA event featured a training workshop where officials from several government sectors underwent UABA’s distinctive Blockchain 101 course, which was officiated by Minister of Science and Technology, Felix Mutati.

Recognizing the need for digital literacy, skills development preparation for the 4th Industrial Revolution, and poverty alleviation, UABA has launched a youth-empowerment pilot project in three of Lusaka’s townships, in collaboration with the country’s Science and Technology Ministry.

The government is looking to blockchain adoption and the ways blockchain can be used in the drive for self-sustaining communities that are less reliant on government, as well as a payment system for a basic human needs scheme, as the government shifts to new technological digital systems to solve structural problems.

 Probase, Zambia’s premier finance and ICT company, has announced a partnership with UABA to bring life-changing blockchain-based solutions to Zambians and, perhaps, Africans, as well as delivering the capacity building on projects like the impending youth empowerment pilot project.

The youth-empowerment pilot project aims to build sustainable local communities through incentive-based crypto opportunities that will allow communities to earn and spend cryptocurrencies for fundamental human needs, as well as test the feasibility of using blockchain in the Zambian government. The project has been designated for the Zambian cities of Kalingalinga, Chainda, and Mutendere.

The exact start date of the project has yet to be confirmed.