Hello dear steemians, good day or what ever time you are reading this write up.
Today I want to talk about crypto currency and it’s evolution in Africa and how Africans have viewed the evolution of this Fin tech( financial technology) especially in countries like Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Cameroon where I reside.
It might be surprising to lots of you when you get to the knowledge that such a technology just made its way to an economy like Cameroon last year 2017. Although many authors have written about Africa as a potential large market for crypto currency, they have failed to look at the huddles such a technology faces in Africa. I will just like to look at some of the evolutions of the Fintech as a new technological era in Africa
Africans have largely taken into the use of bitcoin as a major source of finance. The African market can be seen as a large market for crypto currency. This can be largely allocated to the economic fluctuations in the last decade, taking a good reference to inflation in an economy like that of Zimbabwe in 2015. During this inflationary period most of the citizens of Zimbabwe found a cushion in the use of bitcoin and other currencies which were not influencing the economy.
Also the large use of smart phones by Africans with the introduction of Android software by google has greatly influenced the use of crypto currency in Africa.
We can also say the inability of the government of african country to meddle in crypto currency has contributed to the use of crypto currency , for example in countries like Cameroon where the government have very strict, high and rigid tax laws and regulations inhibiting the growth of business in such economy, citizens in trying to avoid such regulations have found crypto currency very useful.
Furthermore, due to the inability of some African governments in regulating crypto currency, most of these governments have gone into researching about it( crypto currency) and even creating crypto currency in other to boost the economy, we have economies like Tunisia with the creation of eDinar and Senegal with the creation of eCFA.
But all of these have not gone with out fallbacks especially in Cameroon and African countries where citizens have fallen into the hands of Ponzi schemes like Bitclub and Bitworld.
A lot of citizens had invested in this schemes that lasted for just 7 months causing a lot of indebtedness with people that had developed trust and had to borrow money to invest in such schemes.
And so it has become difficult convincing people who don’t understand how the crypto currency mechanism works to invest in it.
And in my opinion I think that is the greatest huddle that crypto currency is having in Africa because it has become difficult to bring new investors into the program who wanted to try and see its benefits for the first time. The economy of most African countries are based on trust and trust has been broken in so far as crypto currency is concerned.