Nigeria has carved out its name as a cryptocurrency haven worldwide. According to Tripple-A Crypto Ownership data, Africa’s biggest economy is fourth globally in terms of the number of crypto traders. This puts it at a pole position in Africa with 22 million crypto owners.

However, that is just a small fraction of the country’s 220 million people. This is why more industry experts are seeing the need to educate more Nigerians about blockchain, Web3, and cryptocurrencies.

“We have 2% to 3% of people knowing about what Web3 is,” Ruth Iselema the CEO of crypto-trading platform Bitmama, says. She adds that about 7% of people are curious about Bitcoin but do not understand how it works.

(Bitmama CEO Ruth Iselema speaking in Nodo News interview in Lagos / Nodo News)

Bitmama’s platform aims to make a use case for cryptocurrency by also providing remittance services.

The sentiments are echoed by Jeremiah Onojah, the CEO of Diagon Studio in an earlier interview with Nodo News. The startup utilizes blockchain-based casual gaming to introduce more users into the crypto space.

“We have close to over 90% of Africans, not just Nigerians who don’t understand the blockchain space,” Onojah said. “Some of them don’t even understand utilizing tokens.” Onojah argues that this technology is new to most users in Africa and more chances for education are needed.

Even so, many who are curious about the crypto world have fallen victim to scams. A report by the Nigerian Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stated that over 46,000 people had been scammed, losing over $1 billion since 2021. Moreover, Africans have lost $5.9 billion in scams throughout 2022.

Despite the growth of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies in Nigeria, such losses mean that education is still key in mitigating against these risks.

Nigeria: Most-Crypto Curious Nation

(Shogo Ishida, co-CEO of Emurgo Middle East & Africa / Photo by Nodo News)

To help bridge this literacy gap, Emurgo Africa, the regional commercial arm of Cardano blockchain founding entity Emurgo, recently signed a deal with the Pan-African University. The Memorandum of Understanding is meant to train students on the technologies of the Web3 space.

Shogo Ishida, the co-CEO of Emurgo Middle East & Africa says that it seeks to build a community of Web3 talent. It also aims to establish a vibrant investment ecosystem for Web3 companies and traditional financial institutions.

The collaboration will “unite and support local founders to build socially impactful solutions that can solve existing challenges.”

The signing comes against a backdrop of a CoinGeko report that placed Nigeria as the most crypto-curious country in the world. The report examined Google Trends data of search terms frequently used by people interested in cryptocurrency.

“With a total search score of 371, Nigeria topped the list for its population having the highest search levels for the phrases ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘invest in crypto’ and ‘buy crypto’ worldwide,” the report found. “Additionally, the population of Nigeria search for the blockchain ‘Solana’ the third most worldwide.”

However, the cash crunch in Nigeria has opened opportunities for more people to experiment with cryptocurrencies, as explained by Forbes.

It stated: “The recent economic cash crisis in Nigeria, caused by the naira redesign, political climate, and economic conditions, has increased bitcoin’s value proposition for average Nigerians.”

Growing Blockchain-based Startups in Nigeria

According to an analysis by Emurgo, Nigeria hosts the highest number of blockchain-based startups in Africa.

Data shows that 27 projects among the 62 African blockchain projects, have their headquarters in Nigeria, followed by seven in South Africa, six in the US, five in Kenya, and four in the UK.

“The fintech projects include payment, digital bank, lending, book-keeping etc,” the report denoted. “Many of these are mobile app services, which aim to lower the barriers to entry for crypto for the average consumer and to spread crypto to the general population in one fell swoop.”

The African Blockchain Report 2021 by CV VC and Standard Bank highlight the growth of blockchain startups in countries like Nigeria.

“Countries like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana have seen a rapid uptake of crypto assets to access more efficient payment rails provided by blockchain networks and yield returns on income with assets like Bitcoin or stablecoins pegged to the value of the US dollar,” it established. This need has seen the growth in blockchain-based startup, especially in fintech.

This only means that Nigeria will be able to rope in more users into the blockchain and crypto space in the years to come.

-Edited by Faustine Ngila