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Leading blockchain protocols and other actors jockey for position in the race to build and mold Africa’s emerging Web3 economy.

Whatever you prefer to call it — crypto, blockchain or Web3 — this new segment of the digital economy is booming across Africa. If you’ve been sleeping on the sector, now’s a good time to wake up.

Why? Well for one, according to analytics firm Chainalysis, Africa’s crypto market increased in value by more than 1,200% between July 2020 and June 2021. Led by especially high adoption rates in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Tanzania, Africa had the third-fastest growing cryptocurrency economy worldwide during that period. And that’s not all. Chainalysis also found that Africa leads the world in the share of overall crypto transaction volume coming from peer-to-peer, an indication that African consumers in crypto-unfriendly jurisdictions are increasingly finding workarounds to explicit and implicit bans.

Alongside the overall growth in cryptocurrency trading and transactions across Africa, the last 12 months have seen an accelerated pace of activity across the continent from blockchain networks/protocols, venture capital firms, grant funders, governments and more.