Binance is among the main players that have raised crypto literacy across Africa in recent years, banking on the continent’s youthful, tech-savvy population.

As crypto scams lurk in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa, the company keeps on organizing blockchain bootcamps and crypto education in colleges in these countries. The goal is to have an enlightened continent on blockchain and steer it away from global crypto fraud traps.

In January 2022, Binance said it had provided free crypto classes to over 400,000 Africans since January 2020 when it launched Binance Masterclass. The training centered on topics ranging from user protection to building a career in blockchain.

Crypto Tours Across Africa

Last September, Binance launched a crypto tour across five Francophone countries in Africa. Kicking off in Togo, it progressed to Benin, Côte D’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso. Attendees were taught on the various use cases of blockchain.

Around the same time, 3,000 students benefitted from a six-day university tour in Kenya. They were taught on the latest developments in Web3. The Ghana Campus Tour 2023, which started on Feb. 4, is ongoing across the cities of Accra, Cape coast, Winneba, Tarkwa, Takoradi, Kumasi, Tema, Wa, Ho, Sunyani, and Koforidua. It will end on Apr. 4 after 15 meetups.

The company runs Binance Crypto Exchange, Binance Info, Binance Labs and Binance Launchpad. It hopes that by spreading blockchain knowledge across Africa, the continent could find more noble ways to address the challenges it faces.

By entrenching investments and startup incubation in the decentralization infrastructure market in the continent, Binance is gradually helping many users advance the value of peer-to-peer transactions and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Nodo News spoke to Binance’s East Africa Director, Nadeem Anjarwalla in Nairobi. He is the former general manager of Uber Eats Kenya.

–How long have you been in the crypto industry?

My journey with crypto started as early as 2012. More as an observer, as a lot of my friends were investing in crypto for fun. And just interactions within the crypto space. In my time as a venture capital investor, I was looking closely at crypto projects and found myself invested quite heavily into Web3 .

With Binance, I’ve been here for just shy of a year. I was born in Kenya but I have spent some time in the UK, at the University of Oxford where I did a little bit of stuff. My career kicked off as a corporate commercial lawyer. And then I realized I like to build and break things. So I went off to grad school. I later pivoted and have been building on my operational experience for the last eight plus years.

–What is your perception of the African crypto and Web3 market as a whole?

First, there has definitely been a lot of volatility in the market. By virtue of what’s been happening over the last nine months or thereabouts. And we’ve seen some runs, some movements both upward and downward. But I think there’s a global macroeconomic at play here that is affecting markets globally.

Africa is still at a very early stage in the adoption of both Web3 and crypto. Looking at the numbers, you’ll realize that it’s still very early. But there are great use cases for what both crypto and Web 3. With 54 sovereign states, each with its own regulatory system, challenges of moving money exist.

So I do believe that it’s early and there’s a lot still to be done. We’re very much at the start of the curve.

In addition, I would say that if you look at the use cases, you’ll draw some patterns. From the population, and demographics. A young population across the continent, highly innovative and huge in terms of tech adoption, but also very disruptive.

–Which countries Binance focuses the most in Africa?

We have a presence by virtue of how the technology stacks are built. We have a presence in most countries, we believe in Africa as a collective region. We’ve been building out teams across the continent.

To answer your question more specifically, as mentioned earlier, we divided the continent into four key geographic zones; East Africa, West Africa, Southern African and Francophone Africa. So we have the right focus and attention spread across the continent.

I would say Kenya is a key focus area for us in East Africa, Nigeria and Ghana in the West, Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire in Francophone and South Africa, obviously in southern Africa are the key markets for us.

–I feel like many African people have limited knowledge about investment and asset management. Do you think Binance is doing enough to educate the African people?

Yes. I think the key to really building out adoption here across the continent is through education. Education and awareness. And I think that the Web2 infrastructure has really excluded a lot of people across the continent. Yes, from being able to participate in these services and products that are out there in order to invest, generate an income or increase wealth.

Stock markets in many countries that we operate in are not seen as being accessible. That’s what we as Binance are trying to break through. We are trying to provide a platform for them to help store value, in crypto and Web3. And also invest in trade and grow.

–In Nigeria there’s Nollywood and it’s competing with Hollywood and Bollywood of the US and India. What is your view on Nollywood? What can you say about the cultural content from Africa on top of the Binance chain in future?

We could focus on how we build awareness. And also adoption that generates an interest and is localized enough to speak to a local population. If you’re going to be unique, you need to be able to speak to the population. This is by finding channels in which its use is already engaged in and leveraging that.

In addition, can we introduce elements of Web 3 to an existing TV infrastructure, or creative content? That’s exactly what the world is being built around – NFT’s. I guess we’re prioritizing a certain go to market at this point. And I think we look forward to building and being more creative and collaborative.

–Do you have any quantitative target – like retail user and institutional users’ numbers- for, perhaps, this or next year?

Yes, we set ourselves KPIs that we want to reach. We do that from a bottom-up perspective. In terms of what kind of levels of awareness and education we want to do or to deploy. As a result, we will acquire new users and have them engaged in the platform. We break that down by the different countries and regions that we operate in. And as we look to grow, we’re excited about the potential.