Waka

Every year, African businesses move billions of dollars to pay their Asian supply chain partners. Electronics, machinery, solar panels, construction equipment. They pay slowly, expensively, and through infrastructure designed for entirely different corridors. The correspondent banking system was built to serve trade flows that ran west. Africa's trade increasingly runs east. In 2024, Africa ran a $62 billion trade deficit with China while running surpluses with Europe and the United States. The dollars earned in London and Brussels must eventually reach Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The infrastructure connecting those two realities was never designed for the job. Stablecoins are changing part of this picture; less as a new currency, more as a mechanism for making existing dollar liquidity move at the speed trade actually requires. But the rail is only one layer. Settling into China carries compliance requirements that have no equivalent in Western payment systems. The data that travels with the payment is what makes the payment legitimate. Our latest piece on Frontier Fintech examines what it takes to build infrastructure that fits this reality and profiles Waka, the company April Long built after a decade managing the Africa-Asia corridor from inside Standard Chartered Kenya. Link in Comments. Subscribe to Frontier Fintech.

Every year, African businesses move billions of dollars to pay their Asian supply chain partners. Electronics, machinery, solar panels, construction equipment. They pay slowly, expensively, and through infrastructure designed for entirely different corridors. The correspondent banking system was built to serve trade flows that ran west. Africa's trade increasingly runs east. In 2024, Africa ran a $62 billion trade deficit with China while running surpluses with Europe and the United States. The dollars earned in London and Brussels must eventually reach Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The infrastructure connecting those two realities was never designed for the job. Stablecoins are changing part of this picture; less as a new currency, more as a mechanism for making existing dollar liquidity move at the speed trade actually requires. But the rail is only one layer. Settling into China carries compliance requirements that have no equivalent in Western payment systems. The data that travels with the payment is what makes the payment legitimate. Our latest piece on Frontier Fintech examines what it takes to build infrastructure that fits this reality and profiles Waka, the company April Long built after a decade managing the Africa-Asia corridor from inside Standard Chartered Kenya. Link in Comments. Subscribe to Frontier Fintech.