Africa has the world’s attention. From investors in Silicon Valley to operators in Europe and Asia, the question of how to invest in Africa has become more compelling over the past decade. Seeking returns, deep-pocket funders have diligently probed into what the continent offers and its sectors with the highest promises for returns and scale. Fintech and Crypto have differentiated themselves in this regard, having minted most of the local companies worth over a billion dollars. In many ways, the widespread adoption of both technologies also reflects Africa’s state of digitisation, making them crucial to discussions about overall continental growth.

Held in Accra, the Africa Money and Defi Summit was another opportunity to zoom into the state and future of these technologies and explore their connections to Africa’s prosperity. Innovators and stakeholders, including central bank representatives, gathered on October 3rd and 4th in the famed Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel, to have critical conversations about the immediate next steps for Africa’s fintech and blockchain industries, and, probably, to give Ghana’s Jollof a chance at bragging rights.

There is a long-standing conversation about tech players and their regulators being on separate divides when it comes to the tech sector’s growth. Thankfully, that narrative is changing with events like the Money and Defi Summit bringing together regulators and ecosystem players into a room to interact and engage. Kwame Oppong, the director of fintech and innovation at Ghana’s central bank, was joined by Bertrand Ndengeyingoma, the chief technology and innovation officer of the Bank of Rwanda on a panel session that explored fintech regulations and the rise of CBDCs. This panel was moderated by Carmelle Cadet, founder of Emtech, a firm that leverages technology to bring modernity to central banking.

The panel session highlighted how forward-thinking and pro-innovation central banks in Africa can be, contrary to widespread perceptions. The Bank of Ghana, which piloted the digital cedi last year, announced its plans to scale its national CBDC and drive more mainstream adoption. Emtech will be facilitating this with a 12-week hackathon, which will have institutions and individuals across Ghana build and test out use cases that can integrate the e-cedi into the daily lives of Ghanaians.

Another interesting conversation at the summit was about cross-border payments and remittances. The panellists were Muyiwa Babrinde, Waza’s head of marketing; Ebenezer Ghanney, Wewire’s CEO; Teslim Anifowose, Budpay’s growth lead; and Uzoamaka Okoro, Fincra’s head of operations. The conversation segued into leveraging stablecoins for payments and how that fundamentally erases traditional forex barriers.

“Using stablecoins, funds move between wallets without intermediaries. Stablecoins are simple and faster because verification is done on the blockchain, and not by banks,” Ghanney shared on the panel. Fincra’s Okoro acknowledged the benefits of crypto for moving money across borders but stressed the need for anti-money laundering measures to ensure monies are used for legal purposes. The panel discussion highlighted the double-edgedness of crypto transfer anonymity; On one hand, it provides financial privacy for users, but it also creates an opportunity for illegal money transfers to circumvent banks’ AML-compliant systems. In response, Ghanney argued that the transparency of blockchain transactions makes it easy to spot bad actors, as is the case with publicly labelled scam wallets.

A look into Africa’s web3 future

Several ecosystem stakeholders agree that Africa’s adoption of crypto and blockchain technologies is integral to fulfilling its ideal as a world powerhouse. With the youngest population in the world and a fast-growing internet penetration rate, Africa’s trajectory only goes upward. At the Africa Money and DeFi Summit, stakeholders in Africa’s crypto world came together to discuss the future of crypto on the continent. A roundtable conversation on this theme welcomed players such as Jason Marshall, chief operating officer of Yellowcard; Aliu Musa, Africa ecosystem lead at Celo Foundation; Baptiste Andrieux, cofounder of Ejara, and William Phelps, an investment manager at Adaverse.

Musa shared that success for African crypto must mirror the levels of adoption achieved by mobile money systems. Presently, transactions in sub-Saharan Africa account for nearly 70% of the $1 trillion transacted through mobile money globally. The region witnessed a 40% YoY growth to land its $697.7 billion in processed payments, far ahead of East Asia and South Asia ($156.3 billion), the other regions with leading mobile money penetration. In contrast, Chainalaysis reported that sub-Saharan Africa received just 2.3% of all crypto value globally between July 2022 and June 2023. Unlike Africa’s mobile money systems, which relied on rails set by telcos and banks to provide first-layer digital financial services to the underserved, crypto adoption requires building new rails and dealing with the crypto averseness of African governments. Still, the promise of crypto for fast, cheap, and stressless payments remains promising for Africa—and with more grassroots-focused projects springing up, Musa’s ideal for crypto adoption in Africa seems more tangible.

Yellow Card’s Marshall discussed the need for crypto firms to build more trust in their systems. According to him, building trust sits atop Yellow Card’s priorities and influences how they spend money. “We haven’t sponsored any big reality TV shows or done some things that make us look ‘cool’. We focus more on compliance, education, and other unsexy parts of the business that build trust in us over time,” he said. For Ejara’s co-founder, Adrieux, Africa’s crypto crystal ball reveals a world where blockchain powers financial services for the 99%; the full spectrum of financially unserved and underserved Africans. Ejara makes it easy for users to buy fractionated bonds and stocks with as little as a dollar.

To inch closer to this promising crypto reality for Africa, there’s a huge demand for advanced collaboration and ecosystem support, said Adverse’s Williams Phelps. “One of the most exciting things for us at Adaverse is being able to connect international methods, talent and expertise with local founders on the continent. And we try to be on the ground as much as possible. That’s crucial to understanding nuances and use cases,” he said, maintaining that introducing blockchain to legacy systems is a big bet for crypto in Africa.

Other insights into the African crypto future were by Munachi Ogueke, the OneLiquidity CEO who stressed that tokenisation, and not DeFI, was Africa’s next big bet. Ogueke notably shares this idea with Trust Wallet CEO, Eowyn Chen, who took a similar position in an earlier interview with NODO.

Part of the event’s lineup of activities was an investment showcase sponsored by NODO in collaboration with Cardano ecosystem accelerator, Adaverse. It featured ten exciting startups in Africa's fintech and blockchain space, including Hurupay, SaFi Protocol, BluPay and One Chain Africa. The companies had the chance to pitch their solution, traction, business trajectory, and funding goals to a large gathering of fintech and blockchain stakeholders at the event. William Phelps and Somwya Raghavan, NODO’s head of product were among the judges that screened the startups and offered expert advice.

Other key takeaways

Flutterwave is incorporating crypto payments into its offerings for businesses and individuals.
Fuse Network is launching a $10m fund for web3 DeFi and social impact startups.
Sarah Idahosa’s Women In DeFi is set to launch more campaigns to onboard a new generation of web3 enthusiasts.
Africa’s largest telco MTN will separate from its fintech arm by 2025 and launch a developer community that will provide fintech APIs.
NODO is set to offer more grants to web3 startups building local solutions for Africa’s problems.

The African Money and DeFi summit, now in its second year, remains one of the most important events in African tech, gathering people from across the continent to learn, network, and collaborate towards a prosperous African future powered by blockchain technology.