Blockchain arrives everywhere, and it has also arrived in Africa.
Naturally, it is not as widespread as in the more developed continents, but interesting trends have been observed over time in countries such as Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mauritius, Tunisia and South Africa.
We start from Senegal with a curiosity. The rapper Aliaune Thiam aka Akon, has a huge and futuristic plan: 6 billion dollars of investment to build a hyper-technological city in Senegal. According to the project, there will be a hospital, hundreds of apartments, an electricity system powered by solar energy, public facilities and schools, but above all parks and skyscrapers that seem straight out of a science fiction film. But the most innovative thing revolves around the use of a cryptocurrency as a reference currency or the Akoin. All this should be born in 2021, and according to Akon's futuristic plans, its Akoin cryptocurrency will have enormous potential because it will become the undisputed reference cryptocurrency for the whole of Africa. In short, Senegal seems oriented towards the future with the fifth gear, we will see the developments.
Another curiosity comes from Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world. In fact, in 2018 Sierra Leone used the Blockchain for the registration and counting of votes during the elections. If only it happened in Italy .....
Another country that has actually opened its doors to Blockchain technology is the Mauritius archipelago. In fact, the government itself concluded an agreement in 2018 with a South Korean company, which aims to introduce a platform on which to conduct banking transactions in less than two seconds.
Finally, South Africa also enters the countries where the cryptocurrency issue is very popular and I would say very hot. The government recently presented a draft to recognize cryptocurrencies as a financial asset, while, unfortunately, various scams against end users continue to be registered in the country. In fact, in 2020, a major fraud occurred in the cryptocurrency industry in South Africa, causing a group of investors to lose approximately $ 1.2 billion.
There is no doubt that the somewhat futuristic project of rapper Akon in Senegal is the one that attracts my attention the most, giving birth to a totally digital city, which uses exclusively renewable energy and uses its own cryptocurrency, the Akoin, to regulate exchanges, in addition to being an exciting project, it could open the doors for the creation of similar ecosystems in other countries, who knows maybe even African ones.
