Role of DeFi and Regenerative Finance in Africa

Transcript

foreign [Music] Africa ecosystem lead uh half before me today the topic of role of D5 and regenerative Finance in Africa before I did dive into this how many of us has been to Africa before nice is there anyone from Africa good is anyone here who lives in Africa apart

from those that are from Africa nobody all right how many of us has infested in or maybe the as per the project or work on a project in Africa cool looks like a lot of African people here right it's nice you know Africa itself is like to some people it feels like Africa is just a country uh to many people they'd be like Africa is maybe a country of just a small City or something right uh I have you know a personal contest that I'm going to be talking about Africa to say before we Deep dive into the uh topic uh a little bit about myself uh

like I mentioned earlier I work at the cello Foundation as the Africa ecosystem lead I have an engineering background in software engineering I started my career in software engineering back in 2014 2015. um actually I was a student when I started my career and um ever since then I've always been a pretty you know during the day of high CEO when people were building different uh stops to you know kind of like scam people it's no more available right so uh I've worked all of my all over my life in webtree uh I work with I started a company called DLC Africa back in 2016. we were using that to support people in local community to learn more about web 3 so

it's more like we're pre-education we still have DLT agriculture today but it's it's a skill to now uh supporting people to learn web 3 developments uh more technical sites of web career right so after that I work with a company called real items based in the U.S uh as a regional manager where I support in expansion and Business Development Across Africa I've worked with oks um okay this is a cryptocurrency exchange how many of us knows okay ICA okay cool yeah okay yes I I was the first employee of oks in Africa uh apt in expansion of the business into you know the Africa region uh before I joined cello as sea Labs back in 29 2020

right so um it's been a ride and I've been I've been with the sort of foundation for for three years now you know working on growth everyone across Africa and with this with all of these you know experiences uh I have always you know building being the intersection of web free you know and technology and like other emerging technology and defy has always been like a topic that has always come up especially when it comes to the case of Africa and that's not because of anything but because of the fact that use cases of web 3 is really really fun for Africa uh as a continent because of a lot of problems that is you know

evolving in the continent right so um just a little few about Africa Africa is a home to over 1.4 billion people uh I know many people really doesn't know that Africa has a lot of population like that uh and this you know covers about 16 of the global populations and it's still emerging uh because it's it's it's it's it's kind of like projected to have a lot of a lot more population than these internet a couple of years right uh also there are a lot of Youth population in Africa and um we have you know more than 60 of you know the population that are still under 25 which is you know kind of like you know the

biggest in in the whole world right when it comes to uh the youthful population and this is kind of like why web free and blockchain Technology as a whole is really growing in this continent because a lot of people are really curious about how they want to like uh partake in the sustainable uh Solution by taking you know emerging solution imagine technology right so and also because we have a lot of uh well not a lot of but you know relatively a good number of mobile phone penetration in Africa and of course uh internet's penetration as well the internet penetration in Africa

is way below you know the world uh the global average but of course it's still a good number because we have over 500 million people that have internet access in Africa uh it's it's actually beat up some people's expectations because it's never what many people actually expect and a lot of a lot of plans are being put in place a lot of you know Innovations are actually coming up to make you know internet penetrations still grows up right as as uh as more than it is right now I would like to ask a question that um from the audience because I want to make this as interactive as as possible is there anyone here who has ever traveled to Africa but

uh eventually have problem with internets when they get to Africa okay so how what kind of experience do you have with internet was it like a bad experience was it a very large uh laggy experience or something thanks hi hi everyone uh I come from Algeria so my experience will be based on this country uh to answer to your question I would say that the internet quality really depends on where are you exactly

let's say that in the capital everything is working good uh the 4G and the Wi-Fi is is really good but on others which is really complicated especially in the mountains so that's that's my experience about that it's quite changing with the time but uh nothing compared to Europe unfortunately yeah and you are in Lagos right in Africa in Nigeria were you in Lagos or Abuja sorry oh Algeria Algeria yes okay okay so we were in the capital right sorry capital of Algeria LG okay okay LG yes nice okay yeah you want to tell us your experience okay

hi thank you I was conducting some surveys agricultural surveys in Zambia and in rural Zambia they have no internet we had to drive every day back to the to the city to Lusaka the capital of Zambia to sync with our servers it was a quite a difficult experience how many years ago was that one year ago okay last summer nice okay any other pissing all right so um I think generally this is like uh one of the challenges that is being faced by many people in Africa and like this is one of the biggest challenges that you know crypto adoption in Africa or TV adoption

in Africa is also you know facing but for this there has always been you know local solutions that are solving the problems because if you don't have access to Internet perhaps you don't have to access to your wallet but there are solutions that are you know being breathed on the ground locally to actually tackle this uh you know problems and we're going to get there as we proceed forward um just a privilege of you know what crypto looks like uh in Africa um we have 100 you know over 100 billion USD transactions of crypto that's happening in Africa and majority of this transaction is actually retail transaction you know crypto adoption in Africa is actually driven by crypto uh

uh retail crypto transactions and that's mainly because of the fact that we have a lot of youthful population that are just looking for a way to you know maybe send remittances maybe just make payment or soft problems that they are facing uh that has just been emerged from maybe regulation or different kind of uh local laws or else you know been put out by different government bodies across different countries in Africa um we also have about 42 percent uh year on year 50 funding in Africa for crypto projects I mean this is really huge especially in 2021 2022 we saw a really huge growth of VC funding you know going into different crypto projects in Africa

and I was like the highest kind of you know funding that we uh we have seen so far like in crypto in Africa um also we have about 80 percent you know of all of these transactions that are in retail just like I mentioned earlier and this is just so because crypto uh or literally cross-border transaction and payments in Africa is really a very very difficult thing and crypto has just come to just make that easy and possible right so people it's difficult to just send your money from let's say from Kenya to Uganda uh through bank like you just go to any of this Traditional Bank it's really

difficult it's expensive it's slow but with crypto it has made it more easier for people to just you know pick up their phone do the transaction and it with just maybe 0.1 dollar they perform the transaction within few seconds or minutes right so it's it's a lot of um it's a lot of growth and a lot of uh you know activities that has actually coming within it as as we move uh forward now talking about defy in Africa when you talk about diva in Africa I actually wanted to know what would like I think this question I would like people that are not living in Africa to you know maybe take it off like if you hear that there is defy adoption in

Africa and if anyone tell you that people in Africa are actually using T5 you know to solve different problems how would you feel what would what would you think like is there anyone who wants to tell us what they would think if they hear about defy adoption in Africa is okay people borrowing money okay maybe we should use the mic I'm not sure if everyone can hear you yeah okay microfinance okay yeah

yeah sure yeah price exposure to U.S equities or equities in other countries all right yeah end it up okay cool yeah um Define Africa has actually you know come from adoption of diva in Africa has come from different angles it depends on different problems just like I mentioned earlier there are a lot of problems uh traditional financial problems are has been created or that has been assisted in Africa and the adoption of crypto or let me see the imagine of crypto has actually created a lot of solutions to these problems so it now depends on the handle of problems that everyone is facing I'll give you an example before I deep dive myself I am from Nigeria I in Nigeria

we actually can't use our bank card outside of Nigeria say for example you have a bank a card from a bank in Nigeria say First Bank card immediately you travel outside of Nigeria it's useless until you get back to Nigeria you cannot use it to make payment for your coffee to perform any transaction you can't even use it to book your flights yeah unless there is a a like and hairline that is taking uh you know cash locally right otherwise you can't book a flight you can book your hotel right so that's like just one of many problems that has been created by you know different local laws and local Regulators in Africa and with crypto

this kind of problems are you know really been solved because it would ask me if I don't have a card that I could use to book a flight how did I go to Paris from Nigeria right of course maybe crypto right uh how has like how have I been moving around in Paris right maybe through crypto card right so we're going to get to some of these Solutions and you know what actually created the problems um why is divide important in Africa there are a lot of problems just like I mentioned but majority of these problems are actually attributed to dollars and if I say dollars people would think about it like why dollars why dollar I

think answer to why dollar creation is the fact that every single thing that you want to do in Africa would actually be in a way attached to USD every single thing you're doing you want to buy a car of course at the end of the day you are importing a car maybe you are buying you are building uh a house or you are buying an apartment many of these you know materials that are used in building up your apartment are actually imported maybe from Italy maybe from China maybe from the US right at the end of the day you find out in fact many countries in Africa still import food Nigeria is one of them like import rice even though it is legal

to import drives but they still do right so in a way there are a lot of things and Africa that are still attached to USD value right so for that reason there is always currency evaluation and inflation right for I'll give you an example from Nigerian perspective in the last three to four weeks there has been over 30 percent of naira devaluation against USD and that is because the Central Bank decided to float the local currency floating means that the market can decide to follow and as the market decided to follow about four or five weeks ago the naira was trading around 460 against USD and I think it's

trading around 830 or something today so that's maybe you're almost 100 already right so this is the kind of problems we have in many countries in Africa right so you go to this country today maybe naira is maybe the local currency is trading against USD at 100 and then you go after some months it's trading 150 right so 50 50 evaluation in just a couple of months and for that reason it's not makes sense for people to now use USD follow stable currencies to Edge against those evaluation and inflation right that is one of the like big use cases of D5 in Africa right and um like I said importation is like one of

the biggest problem look at it we are spending over 531 billion USD annually on importation and we don't like have the equivalent of exploitation because if you are important and you have the equivalent export perhaps you have more demand for your own local currency right but it's not so in the case of Africa we are importing more than we are exporting so for that reason it's it the effect is usually goes back to the local currency um also the fs scarcity that's also like comes from the fact that there are no enough markets for you know the local currency outside of the country just like there are no enough uh need for naira outside of you know Nigeria or

Kenya Shillings outside of Kenya or Ghana cities outside of Ghana on like the way there is Need for Euro even outside of Europe or the way there is Need for USD outside of America or every other countries like pans outside of you know UK right so it's it's the effect of all of these uh attributes usually goes back to the local currency and um one of the things is also the fact that to send remittances or to make payments do any cross-border payment in Africa it is so expensive if you are using the traditional ways of Finance right it's really expensive that it can get as high as up to 10 you know fee when you are

making any cross-border payment so with all of these effects and a lot of other reasons like access to uh like access to lending opportunity for people that doesn't have the right collateral right there are many people that would not have the right collateral but still want to have access to you know lending just like uh someone here mentioned the other time like they mentioned Landing in you know one of the stages here right so defy has come into Africa to kind of like solve majority of these problems although not all of this problem has actually been solved yet but it is really pushing like to solve so many of this problem so I will show you some of the problems that we are currently

experiencing you know uh stethoscope shift on uh with you know the presence of defy in Africa uh but before I say that that is one thing I always believe that I don't think it's actually Africa that needs blockchain to actually survive the truth is that even though there are many of these problems that has been existing before you know imagining of blockchain or cryptocurrency people are still this still being surviving in a way right finding Solutions local solutions to local problems right but because of the fact that has done a lot of these problems in Africa it's just

like something that makes sense for everyone to understand that blockchain really needs Africa in a way that anyone that has the African markets in its pocket has actually has a lot of things because grabbing a population of over 1.4 billion in just with just a continent continent of consumers right you know I mentioned that many of these transactions in Africa are actually driven by retail transaction rights it shows that Africa is a market of consumers right so it's it just makes sense that any product that has the African Market in its pocket you know with the rights crypto Solutions or with the right use case solution with crypto then of course it's it's like it's like

the biggest thing for whatever product that has that kind of opportunity right so um one of these uh use cases that device has actually been driven in Africa is Mutual Credit to simulate local economies how is this actually happening um the cell Foundation partner with you know Grassroots economy to actually help local community or to support local communities in creating vouchers right to kind of like exchange values for services in a way um the way they're doing it is like if someone

is a car mechanic and you need another thing that you probably don't have enough fund to get then if voucher can actually be created in which you offer services to someone that doesn't even need like maybe there is someone that needs Services of a mechanic then you can easily just offer your services for that person the person give you a voucher and you can in turn turn that voucher to you know if a crypto file chart that is actually on chain recorded on chain and turn it to whatever it is that you need you know in that local community and also um Grassroots economies actually

creating like you know local community currencies you know the people within Community can actually cause like for example if we within this stage decide to have a certain local community currencies like our own Community currencies as we are here we can decide to give it any value and decide to use it for anything we want to use it for so it is still useful just within our safe and it is totally Unchained we might not be able to spend that particular voucher outside of this stage but as long as it is still within our safe it is relevant and it is acceptable right so we see that this solution has actually helped in supporting many local community members especially people that

doesn't have access to Internet just like we mentioned earlier people that doesn't have access to smartphones to just create a simple voucher and you know they they don't need to like have access to bank accounts many of these people doesn't have access to bank account they don't even have an identity card to use to create a bank account they don't have the right infrastructure or you know all of the things that is required for them to you know go to a bank and say they need a bank account but with these local community currency generated within you know among themselves uh that is actually backed on and register on chain so it gives a lot of you know uh on-chain transaction and you know transparencies in the way they do their things within their community and it's helping a lot of them just like

you know the kind of scanner that I mentioned uh hell yeah um the way the infrastructure for you know Grassroots economics looks like is you know this might look a little bit not technical but of course it is self-explanatory but I just wanted to understand that if you look at uh the site of where we have the web 2 custody you know users it simply means that people can actually access their wallet through any features phone they don't need access to Internet because with ussd any phone can actually have access to you know their wallets right and people that also have you know maybe

people that are taxify although this solution is not really relevant for people that you know have access to all of these were pre uh jargon and infrastructure but many people that are actually engaging in this solution or people that are relevant that get the relevances of this solution are people that basically doesn't have you know all of the goodies of having a smartphone all of the goodies of having the right access to Internet or even the goodies of being educated right but with the ussd code they have access to you know all of these things directly and they can easily perform their transactions without any uh delay or any obstructions

do we have any questions so far I think this is silent all okay cool so this um Community currencies are competing with the government currencies how much is the government pushing back and resisting all that defy and also enabling our citizens uh to make you know a transaction across borders they don't want that I suppose actually um in terms of how the government are pushing back for Community currency of course uh that is obvious because no

government wants you know uh uh the citizens to overpower them right and uh there has been a lot of Regulation there has been a lot of things being put in place like for example in Nigeria recently uh there was recent launch of in naira uh it's not a community currency it's like a central bank currency but it's still this normal naira that is centralized it's still the same way that you use a bank account or in fact you cannot even have access to any naira if you don't have access to bank accounts like that is the only way you can use the united in Nigeria right so I think this is more like a you know voucher that people are just creating within themselves within the local

community I see my colleague Daniel would like to also make a point on that right yes I've had the benefit of living in in some of these communities uh or around them or close to them and I've seen one of the key benefits that comes is that the the people get it's almost like a stimulus because there's a shortage of the the national or the nationally issued currency right it does not get to them as fluidly as it gets to other places but they still create a lot of value amongst themselves you know a teacher is still providing a lot of value to the students a person who owns

a shop a carpenter each of these people is producing a lot of value but the the nationally issued currency does not get to them easily so with these vouchers it allows them to attribute the value much much efficiently and and to have almost like a stimulus happening within within themselves and so it helps to have more velocity of the currency and and and the money and it gets to a lot more people um and just stimulating the economy of the area um and because they use it locally within the neighborhoods um it doesn't affect much beyond beyond that

um and so and so it's it's it's it's a very welcome idea especially among the people who use it they really love the the the the concept and they use it quite diligently and then we hope to to see more taking it up and and then we'll see how other others respond to it but so far it's been it's been a good uh response especially from the people who are using it all right any other question okay yeah um what kind of cross-border payments are getting more use is it like payments from the UK or France or the United States to an African country or is a lot of inter-african payments like from Kenya to Nigeria and so on

actually no it's intro Africa and I don't know a lot of payments happening within Africa actually to be honest I think it's the fact that there are a lot of uh Africans in the desperate are Cindy remittance back home for example in the U.S the UK Europe you know and of course I think if there is going to be like remittances are is getting out of Africa there is going to be to countries like China maybe Japan rights and you know some other European countries and that's because of the kind of importations uh uh you know a month that people are actually amazing for example uh the um

the remittances to China got to a point in Nigeria and people couldn't you know make payments to you know their providers in China and they had to like resulted into usdt so they were looking for usdt to pay you know their providers in China so but because of the fact that China have like a very good crypto like you know ways of overwrapping and off ramping so it's more easier for them to use it compares to like maybe within Africa if you're sending money to from Nigeria to South Africa you need to make sure that the person in South Africa would find a way to like off-ramp it to local currency I think that's like other challenges that is like just facing the

crypto adoption or divide adoption in Africa as well yep yeah as a follow-up do you see the inter-african Commerce increasing and the amount of payments that go within the con increasing or do you think it's going to be at a low level for a while and as always soon an increase and that's um also because of the fact that they they hear you which is the African Union are trying to like create more like opportunity for intra-african trade and with all of these like policies coming up definitely uh border openings as well you see different countries like opening products for different African countries

to be able to come in and go out easily uh I think one of the biggest challenges that barrier is the fact that even within Africa there are a lot of borders like you can't just pick up your passports as an African and travel to any country even within Africa without a Visa like for example I need a visa to go to Kenya from Nigeria right uh the same thing from for someone in Kenya to come to Nigeria I need a visa to South Africa in fact there are a lot of rejection of visa for for someone that is from Nigeria to travel to South Africa right so I think because of that border uh that is still like you know imaginary border anyways uh those imaginary borders are still like creating a lot of barriers in terms of how in into Africa countries uh continue

to grow all right um I think we can move on from here we still have a lot of things to go over yeah um so one of the other you know use cases that has really been seen uh significant growth is uh accessed to Capital and so um for this one many people has actually been like you know getting access to lending and you know Capital through different protocol and different uh like Community Based you know uh like programs that have been set up right and it's kind of like Unchained that is helping like people that are really doesn't have

access to those Capital initially um I think an example of this is the one that's happened in Kenya I mean Daniel will be like do you want the person to like give a lot of visibility into this one or would you like to take it okay right um yeah so to to this particular use case um and and how we went about it in providing affordable Capital um to people who needed the most uh we looked at some of the challenges that uh people were facing and one was that the the capital that they were having access

to was very expensive um anywhere from 38 annual to um you know more than 100 percent uh annual in fact some of the most popular products learning products annualized at about 84 percent that kind of product would have a base of millions of people who use it and so we were looking uh with working with the theme can we leverage crypto liquidity pools to provide more affordable credit where crypto liquidity pools in this particular case were charging three percent annual uh and share that down um through very beautiful user

experiences uh and in this case we built out a ussd application that did not need internet and did not need people to have a smartphone and the experience was very intuitive and very similar to the the traditional experiences with the banks that people have access to so it was a crypto application without looking like a crypto application and all the mechanics were in the back end where we were leveraging uh uh Capital Market pools in this particular case the product was called Muller Market where we had sticked some collateral and could

access Affordable Credit at three percent uh the employer in this case which is cinch is an agricultural company so they did post the collateral as they had wanted their staff members to access affordable credit because it was coming time for opening of schools and the people would face a lot of costs immediately so by leveraging this crypto liquidity pools we were able to access Affordable Credit and we were able to use very simple intuitive applications to provide that service of course later on we came to realize that as some of these local currencies are sliding

faster like the devaluation is happening faster than calculated it then makes some of these loans inaccessible because on top of working for the interest that would be paid back to the crypto liquidity pool they would also be working to cover the effect effects risk that would have happened within the time that they would have been holding the money so that still continues to be you know one of the challenges um uh in the CR in the credit ecosystem that is faced and we continue to to to to to see what Innovations come of it there is an existing credit Collective that is working with several entities

that are looking to solve credit uh challenges and they'll probably come up with a solution around that all right uh I don't know if anyone would offer any question on that but I think we're good all right okay yeah um in in solving all of these problems I think one of the biggest thing that uh we realize is that there has to be a way for people to have access you know to a half ramp and hung up for crypto you know to Fiat right so um Council Finance has you know came up in setting up different agent Network across you know different communities where people can

easily walk into and change their cryptocurrencies to fiat currency right and that makes it more easier for people who doesn't want to have access to bank accounts to just go to any of these agents like maybe use through their features phone wallet and just exchange that particular you know cryptocurrency to uh cash which is fair right so um apart from the fact that they also offer this that has also been like you know an fx solution in the sense that you can walk into any of these agents and decide to do an fx like do crypto uh cross-border uh transaction and we just you know uh a very very little fee just like you know

just like you're sending like cusd or like like you're sending usdt you know to anyone right so this has like been one of the ways that you know people has also been using D5 to make things accessible for everyone in Africa um I think the other one is the cross-border payments right so um I mentioned earlier that I can't use my you know Nigerian card outside of Nigeria but what are the solutions about these people who has actually been providing and one of the solution is to provide future and physical crypto cards uh you know that is actually that can be found with stable value currencies like cusd like usdt usdc and every other stable value currencies so

this is like being like one of the biggest Innovations and you know especially in Nigeria right now because of the fact that over 200 million population cannot use their card outside of you know the country and you know with this it's only so that without crypto we probably wouldn't have an alternative right now right so and it has really been helpful to you know many many people paying for flight even paying for whatever it is outside of outside of the model of the country um yeah one of the uh partners that we are working with in Africa has also been like they're focusing more on airpodium bank and the on the bank in providing the wallets that can easily be

accessible uh with ussd and so this simply means that like majority of the uh solutions that we've shown earlier was actually like pilotage through you know kutanipi and that's because they have these features of you know just assessing your wallet directly accessing your wallet through ussd with the features phone with a smartphone or you know whichever way but it just shows that there are a lot of you know local solutions that are actually being built to solve local problems and that is one of it because there are still millions of Africans that doesn't have access to smartphones and there are still millions of Africa that are still unbanked or even on the bank I mean the the bank population in Nigeria is just about 60

so we still have about 40 of people in Nigeria that are that are not banned right so and it is the same case in many other countries in Africa right so and with this kind of solution it only helped for this kind of uh population to you know be financially included um because of time I think it makes sense for us to talk about regenerative finance a little bit as well and how this has really been helping in across Africa um regenerative Finance is not just about you know the green part of course the green parties you know the biggest part but it is also about social impact

it is also about economy the sustainability right so and that is what makes a regenerative Finance truly regenerative Finance it's about making that social impact within the community and that's um what's a I kind of like put into you know history definition about environmental sustainability social justice and inclusion and of course economic wrestling so with this there are a lot of uh problems that are actually having happening in Africa it's not just about Africa I think re-fight is not just about Africa river is you know what everyone actually like needs it's it's happening in Europe it's happening in you know Latin America right it's just

that ways that we actually need seats are more maybe in Africa than other regions maybe in Africa or let's say in Imagine markets than you know other regions right so I'm going to like so the little bit of you know how we have different solutions that are solve using regenerative Finance to solve real-world problems and how a lot of people has actually been benefiting from that you know this is like you know one of the most you know impressing projects or one of the most impressive projects that I've seen coming or building a revised solution um so we said us the name is actually you know incentivizing people to you know uh be

conscious of their Waste Management in a way so they set up an agent Network across different you know corners of the city and even the local communities The Villages right and then what how it works is that they want you to bring all of their all of your waste in your house to the agents you know the agent would weight up it will record it will be recorded on chain and you will get incentivized in the equivalence token of that particular you know waste and of course for some people who doesn't know how it doesn't even have like uh let's say access to smartphone to be able to get credited in crypto or something they

also have you know different programs like the ubhi which is like the universal basic and insurance so it makes people to exchange their waste to access Earth insurance they can people can exchange their waste product to pay their children's school fees right so you take your waste you know your ways to the Children's School to your children's schools because they have partnered with their the way up your ways and then they convert the equivalent amount of that particular waste to your children's school fees so in a way people are working on the road of their Villages picking up waste on the road sustainability comes from there right so because you know that if you pick up

this waste you're actually converting it to an earth Insurance to your student school fees maybe two other things maybe it's just a furniture that you can use to just get food like in one of these uh restaurants or anything right so these are the things that they have actually been working on and it is really growing big because they have been having a lot of partners that I don't have you know the capacity to announce on their behalf but I just want to like you know suitcase this product because it's like you know one of the biggest way I've seen people using regenerative Finance to impact their local communities and I believe that everyone would agree with me on this right so um the next one is the Green Forest

um so the green forest team are actually also incentivizing people to get uh like to collect Forest data on their behalf uh like also to kind of like do a frustration on their behalf like so if you get data out of you know how many trees you have in your communities you get incentivized on chain if you kind of like there are there are also many products that are also incentivizing people to just you know maybe plant a tree or just you know kind of like do anything that would benefit the environment so the environmental

sustainability has actually been driven a lot with different you know regenerative Finance products and we are seeing this growth uh really you know really rapid and I believe that this is just like you know the beginning of uh rify across the world not just in Africa because it's it's a lot of impact for everyone the sustainability the impact that is the collective impact that is making on every one of us is is huge uh I've seen you know products that maybe not in Africa but that is incentivizing people just to clean up an ocean to remove waste from an ocean and I you know everyone would agree that those are those are really cool ways to you know use technology use the blockchain

technology to like you know solve different problems and incentivize people right so um yeah carbonov said everyone would like everyone understand that you know carbon offset is like becoming a really big market and we are seeing like different projects that are also like like incentivizing carbon offset right so you're offset they help you to offset you know your carbon uh emission and then it's just like they work with different communities like maybe to plant trees and then they're getting certified for those things especially for some of these communities are actually being like uh challenged

with maybe a very big erosion that has you know washed away all of the grains in the communities right so we have seen different projects that are also supporting this course across uh Africa uh as we talk about regenerative Finance it is also very important for us to talk about the challenges that you know different projects or the challenge that you know the crypto projects or Define and refine projects are facing in Africa one of it is funding as much as you know I stated that we are really seeing increase in like 50 funding for crypto projects in Africa it is still really

really below what you know the counterparts are saying in you know places like Europe uh North America and you know like uh developed you know Community like that and with the fact that there are a lot of you know cool projects that are bringing that are coming up for example the wasted predates that are actually exchanging uh waste for Universal basic health and you know every other things I've not raised a fund maybe they don't want to raise a fund maybe they are looking at the challenges but the truth is that there are a lot of barriers into raising funds from Africa uh there are a lot of reasons attached to that that you

know the time it would not you know give us the opportunity to cover um I think the another thing is the education the education in the sense that there are still many people especially the unbanked people that feels like they never needs to be banned because it feels like everything they need is cash and once they have cash it is King right cash is King that is the saying in many Community right like cache's King many people in Africa and the Innovation for this kind of community is really difficult because they don't want to accept right and I think the nest ways for us to kind of like uh educate people because as I list

the challenges I am going to be talking about some of the ways we can overcome these challenges right is to also like you know um educate the developers that are going to breed these projects that are going to go to The Last Mile because the real impact is going is going back to the people that doesn't have access to all of the things that people in the city have access to that doesn't have access to bank account you know the the right infrastructure to are not in place for them to have access to the right Financial uh you know institutions right so I think breathing uh you know educating the developers that are going to be you know breathing that Solutions local solutions

for local problems because the local developers would understand local problems right for example I come from a very local community in Nigeria and I know the problems that my community still face today right so it is only important that someone like me would be able to like understand the kind of solution I can bridge to solve the problems in my local communities and not someone that travels maybe from that comes maybe from France or someone that comes from Germany right so if we educate the local community then we are going to have you know the rights local Solutions just like the one I we have stated earlier um regulation is a challenge in Africa uh it has always been a challenge for example uh regulation is one of the reasons why we can't use our card from

Nigeria outside of Nigeria right regulation is one of the reasons why on and off ramp is really difficult in many countries in Nigeria for example in Nigeria in 2021 there was a memo from the central bank that stated that no any regulator entity must touch crypto so the banks the whatever you're doing as long as you have you have a license from the Central Bank you cannot do anything with crypto you cannot honor up for crypto or off-ramp for crypto so this kind of Regulation is still a very big challenge but we are seeing positive like uh like positive reaction towards this kind of thing recently with many countries coming up with different blockchain

policies uh Nigeria one of the ones that recently came up with blockchain policy uh I know there are several other countries in Africa that are you know looking into this uh blockchain policies are crypto policies as well we have seen uh you know uh difference Central Bank currency coming up it only shows that at some point they are they understand that the amazing out big on some of the Innovations and you know the opportunities within the crypto system and they're trying their ways to you know just get in there so inclusive regulation is like you know one of the things that would also help uh growing the crypto and divide adoption in Africa user experience I think uh for me this

is like one of the biggest as well because on average African guy doesn't want to deal with anything that has to do with seed phrase wallet uh Hardware Key whatever like you know all of these things are technical jargons that a normal person just want to pick their phone perform transaction in five seconds and that's it they don't want to go through you know the stress of having to keep their private key somewhere or the stress of having to connect with metamask or you know this the stress of all of these things right so I think as we you know continue to build different solutions for different local you know problems especially Diva

and rifai uh approaching it with a very simple user experience in a way that people can easily just pick up their phone and send fund as simple as they are sending sms I think that would be like the way to go for a huge crypto adoption and divide adoption in Africa uh moving forward um this would be the end of a workshop uh we're hoping to take you know questions so on what we have you know talk about so far I know we don't have much time but I think we can take you know maybe a few questions yes uh if you have any question just raise your hand and we will give you a microphone yep okay

thank you uh you just mentioned a few minutes ago uh that's what uh that you are facing uh issues around on-ramp and off-ramp problematics uh can you give us more insight about that uh I will be happy to know how did you manage this topic into past projects you mean um if I get your question right uh people are actually navigating through on and off ramp uh okay exactly from there there currently their National currently to crypto and the other other yeah of course as much as there are regulations you know that

actually but you know regulated entities from touching crypto there are still like a lot of you know companies that are doing purely crypto as long as you're doing purely crypto you don't need a license you know uh you are not regulated if you're not regulated then you don't have anything to do with uh you know with the central bank or anything and then the biggest approach that people are using is peer-to-peer right peer-to-peer is like the biggest forms of you know crypto transactions in Africa they have to pay in the sense that you just you know you have an escrow uh like I'm not sure if you have tried balance peer-to-peer before uh or any other peer-to-peer like paxful so you have an escrow they serve

as an escrow someone who is willing to buy as indicated how much they want to buy you want to sell and you know how much you want to sell they pay into your local bank currency and then the particular cryptocurrency is being escrowed which means it is freezed from your wallet immediately you click that you're selling and until you confirm that you have received you know the local equivalents uh Fiat in your bank accounts then you are not going to release the fund so you if you click that you have confirmed then the fund is released to you know the other party so I think that's like the biggest way that people are actually you know dealing with the uh on an off ramp uh ways in Africa there are other direct ways that are uh very very straightforward but the

biggest is like peer-to-peer more thank you if we speak if we if we think about a more uh at a larger scale uh larger scale solution at the sale of a country we need to to to find another solution this this not can be a good fit uh in being the long term so what are you uh imagining for the future uh you mentioned that you need to be regulated uh to imagine some solution but getting regulated means having a regulations that's not uh on the table uh for now so uh it's quite hard to imagine like having a G5 Implement

implemented in the in African country if we are facing this for now yeah I think um as much as we actually want us to be regulated everyone's I believe everyone wants regulation is anyone who doesn't want regulation you don't want okay I want yeah as much as we want regulation we still want an inclusive regulation if there is going to be regulation then of course it has to be inclusive it has to be a regulation that works for everyone right if it's not working for everyone then it's not a regulation so I see things like even now there are B2B transaction that is happening with

crypto like large-scale transaction in Africa that is happening in crypto millions of USD transactions that is happening it's not carrying the majority of the transaction but there are still transactions that is happening in b2p you know section right so I still feels like why we wait for regulations to happen we must find a way because the problems are there and one thing about Africans is that there is always alternative right the regulation about um Banks and other regulated entities not touching crypto in Nigeria came up and 24 hours later peer-to-peer was everywhere right it's it felt like people were

already breathing peer-to-peer solution you know before the regulation it felt like people knew what was going to happen because in just 24 hours that everything started happening like there was no energy any you know anything that was stopping us from doing crypto just yesterday right so uh as much as we want to be regulated and we feel like you know regulation is going to make things more easier for on an off-ramp in the future and it would also like protect the investors it would protect everyone in the space right it the only opportunity the only option we have is to you know continue taking advantage of the current uh opportunities and you know the gateways that are available okay thank you welcome

all right um I think there are no more questions okay in the absence of normal questions uh I want to thank everyone for joining us and have a wonderful rest of your day [Music]