Page 74 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 14

Innovate Afrika

fake Naira bills? Because they can’t, Afrikans don’t even know what that restored, we continued.)
because the Nigerian central bank means. Secondly, you need a perma-
has a special unit to check the au- nent internet connection to receive What just happened is the reality of
thenticity of the bill. new blocks of Bitcoin transactions almost all countries in Afrika today.
and send yours. Thirdly, and people
A cryptocurrency is an Afrikan trea- are not talking about it very often, We have internet providers that have
sury. We have to set up a tac team mining Bitcoin requires a lot of no responsibility whatsoever to their
to protect it. It’s not just a comput- energy. It is estimated that in 2020 customers, because they are pow-
er software that is left alone. The the mining of Bitcoin cost about erful, because they are usually from
source code also has to be updated 300 gigawatt hours. That is 10 times former colonizers. For example, my
regularly to take into account the the monthly consumption of any connection comes from Orange,
western development. country on the continent. Crypto- that is France. They are free to deliv-
currencies are not adapted to Afrika, er the service whenever they want.
Do we have the technology to that is why we came up with a new That is the reality of Afrika we don’t
effectively manage cryptocurren- currency that we designed from have a stable internet connection;
cies in Afrika? ground up to be adapted in every we don’t have the same reality as in
This is a very important question, aspect to our context, to the context Europe. I was in Amsterdam for
because this question goes into the of Afrika. five years, I never had a single day a
context. In fact, the real question is shutoff of my internet connection,
are current cryptocurrencies adapt- This is the cryptocurrency that never. I never had for a single day
ing to Afrikan technology? I will WOHAOO has created, Ne- a shutoff of my electricity connec-
answer directly, no. The inventor of bucoin? Tell us about it, what tion, never. But in Afrika, this is our
Bitcoin was an Australian. Australia makes it different and why it is so reality. So, how can we develop our
is a developed country they have an specifically adapted to Afrika. own technology that addresses our
internet connection almost for free, Let me take a small step back to tell context. A technology is a solution,
they have electricity that is so cheap. you how Bitcoin was designed. If we should always remember that.
We don’t have this in Afrika. you heard what I said about Bitcoin, A technology it is not a Bible, it is
There are many points that will tell you will understand that Bitcoin not a universal truth, it is a tool to
you that Bitcoin is not adapted for only considers one actor, the payer, address a problem. A problem is
Afrika. First of all, a Bitcoin trans- that the one paying for the busi- always attached to a specific context
action takes about ten minutes to ness transaction online. Bitcoin was so that is why we Afrikans have to
be processed. Any Afrikan man or designed to put the payer at ease, by develop our own technology. We
woman will tell you that nobody is preventing him or her from giving should not be ashamed to reinvent
going to wait for ten minutes for his away his or her private information, the wheel if it is necessary. Even
cheque to be approved. The second like full name or home address. So, the wheel, we have to reinvent the
thing is about the internet, if you Bitcoin is a one stakeholder crypto- wheel, because the wheel that rides
want to initiate a Bitcoin transaction currency and most cryptocurrencies in Europe is different from the
you have to be online, if you’re not that exist today like Ethereum are wheel that rides in the forest of
online, your business transaction just clones or copies of Bitcoin. Afrika.
might be invalidated later. This is With Nebucoin, we said we are not
not possible in Afrika. going to make a clone of Bitcoin Let’s take the example of roads, we
we are not going to take a single line have imported the asphaltic roads
The third point is about processing. of code from Bitcoin, we are not from Europe to Afrika. Asphalt is
The Blockchain is a decentralized even going to look at the code. We meant for cold climates and here in
network of processing nodes. are going to look at the problem Afrika it is hot, so we make asphal-
Bitcoin was created so that any- and how we can solve it. The first tic roads and after two years, they
one with a CPU can be a Bitcoin question we asked was: Who are are broken. It’s the same thing with
processing node. There is something the stakeholders, who are the actors cryptocurrency. We cannot import
in the design that prevents Afrikan involved in an online business trans- Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
people from joining the network. If action. They are four. in Afrika. The currency is a central
you plan to be a Bitcoin processing element of every country, we cannot
node, you have to have a public (At this point our connection was lost joke with that, if we don’t take
internet address and that alone most temporarily. When the connection was enough precautions, we will lose

74 | we tell the true afrikan story