Jack Dorsey’s Planned Move To Africa Is Being Seen As A Sensational News.- Part 2

Continuing From The Previous Post

The primary use case for the cryptocurrency in Africa is what Dorsey is describing in a part where there are all kinds of inefficiencies around moving money. While the continent’s people pay the highest remittance accosts in the world, it is largely due to fragmented infrastructure an expensive transaction costs. Africa is home to the largest share of the world’s unbanked population by several estimates and has a sizable number of unbanked consumers and SMEs. According to World Bank data, roughly 66% of sub-Saharan Africa’s1billion people don’t have a bank account. While there are hundreds of payment startups across the region, it is looking to move the needle getting people on the financial map-whereby more opportunistically getting them to use their products.

While it has brought to the forefront, the use of successful African fintech products is that while they have been geographically segregated along with few apps being able to scale widely across the borders thereby relating to vastly different regulatory structures and difficulty in shaping product-market-fit from country to country. With this, the crypto currency’s potential to bypass inefficient or deficient finance structures are getting attention in Africa.

There have been several ICOs on the continent for the past two years, where one of the largest was by SureRemit – a startup launched a crypto token aiming at Africa’s incoming and intra country remittance markets. As SureRemits, CEO Adeoye Ojo points out the relevance and timing of the interest of Jack Dorsey in cryptocurrencies on the continent are quite remarkable.

As Ojo points out, the people and governments in Africa are aware of blockchain and cryptocurrencies while compared to two years ago asking questions about how to leverage it and what products to be built around it. Bitcoin is finding utility on the continent as the people transfer value significantly as a lot of businesses try making payments outside Nigeria as they are frustrated with access to forex or access to USD, leveraging Bitcoin making payments directly to vendors or suppliers in Asia and Europe.

Ojo speaks on the business motivation for Dorsey’s move to Africa saying he is looking at the opportunity to get more people to adopt payments on Bitcoin buying Bitcoin with Square as based on the collective information followed by Dorsey’s crypto motives and what emerged from Jack’s recent trip.

Yet to launch services in Africa is Square in case there is a business purpose to Dorsey’s residency, it could be considering how and if the company brings scope for building out services in the region specifically the one based around cryptocurrency.

Advice for Dorsey

Cellulant CEO Ken Njoroge thinks on where Dorsey should spend time on his return, Kenya is a must with its lead as one of the top countries in the world for mobile money adoption. He ascertains that coming to live in the ecosystem is surely good as it is the best way to understand the nuances of business in Africa. It was also with Nairobi based fintech company where Njoroge processes payments in 35 African countries that has suggestions for Dorsey understand any tech play in Africa requiring a long-game commitment given the infrastructure challenges in ecosystem compared to others.

How Are The Experts Viewing Dorsey’s Move? 

Similarly, on this topic, Ice Addis co-founder Markos Lemma says Dorsey provides founders advice on operating around and influencing tech regulation as he’s had a lot of experience navigating the US and other markets with Twitter and Square as he doesn’t know any entrepreneur in Ethiopia or other African markets who has that experience navigating and negotiating regulations. 

While the reality is that Square doesn’t operate in Africa, but Twitter is the fourth most used social media app on the continent selling ads in Africa through partner AdDynamo confirmed by a Twitter spokesperson. CcHub’s CEO claims Twitter is quite powerful in Nigeria as the social media platform in the country is being plagued by the theft of state resources in the hundreds of billions. Tijani explains that it is not just a social media platform for Nigeria but changing the dynamics between people with power is those that they’re meant to serve.  

Adding to this is Ice Addis’ Markos Lemma stating there’s a lot of hate speech together with misinformation showing up on social media as Ethiopia’s 2020 elections on the horizon making it important for him to address how twitter can mitigate that risk. 

The Conclusion

Facing flak from analysts’ and Twitter board members Dorsey has planned his move outside the US with risks associated with Twitter and upcoming American selection. The 2020 move of Dorsey to Africa will certainly uncover opportunities for cryptocurrency and square on the continent. Being a reminder that wherever he travels, it has to do with the complications of the social media company back home.