Richard

A big mistake the world is making is treating African countries as “developing markets” “Developing” assumes a known & predetermined destination, following a known linear path Africa is a frontier market Here is why: 1. Africa is going through major transformations, at the convergence of these tectonic shifts: * massive demographic changes / population growth never seen anywhere before, * access to paradigm changing technologies that no other region had while in similar stages as Africa today, the internet is facilitating hyper connectivity and fast information flow, * wide institutional vacuums that need to be filled from scratch. There is no other region that faced the same challenges at such scale, while also having so much technology and knowledge at its disposal as Africa has today. Instead of trenching the whole continent and laying land line cables, Africans jumped to mobile phones for analog + digital connectivity. Today there are 93 mobile cellular subscriptions for very 100 Africans, and 72% access the internet on mobile. Instead of putting ATM machines in every corner and waiting decades for mega banks to be built, Africans moved to digital #mobilemoney and became more cashless. Today 70% of the world’s $1 trillion mobile money market is in Africa, with 621M registered users, doing 36.7B transactions/year and a volume of $701B. Instead of recreating SWIFT and western union to facilitate non-predatory simple cross-border commerce, Africans are using #crypto for faster and more affordable ways to transact with their neighbours + the rest of the world. Today we have $100B+ onchain crypto volume in Africa, 96% of which are used for cross-border transactions. Instead of overhauling local monetary policies and rewriting IMF/World Bank lending rules to use global currencies, more Africans are using #stablecoins to permissionlessly transact with the world. Stablecoins are the #1 use case for crypto tokens to bypass crippling FOREX shortages and draconian government rules in major African countries. Instead of having hundreds of millions Africans relocate elsewhere seeking better opportunities (I did that 15 years ago) and changing most countries’ immigration settings that keep Africans away (I tried that too), young Africans are plugging into a #permissionless global economy powered by #Web3. They are joining global communities, working with #DAOs, earning global income, learning most things online and building #onchain reputation, without having to leave their home countries and missing home cooked food. The ways Africans are building their countries is not linear and it won’t follow one we’ve seen done before. While parallels can be drawn and lessons can be learned, there isn’t a pre-existing template Africans are following. So if you’re looking outside in, take off the “development” glasses and observe how Africas are walking on uncharted territories. When Africans entrepreneurs are building, the variables they optimize for are very different from those in the West, and they have different constraints and barriers. The West is updating its financial system. Africans are building one from the ground up. Africa is a frontier market and needs to be treated as such.