The African continent is considered a significant market for crypto adoption due to its youthful population, flawed economic management by governments, and inadequate financial infrastructure for internal and global connectivity.
On Episode 28 of Hashing It Out, host Elisha Owusu Akyaw is joined by Christian Duffus, founder of Fonbnk, to discuss the complexity of onboarding users from the continent. Duffus shares his ideas for diverse and innovative ways to onboard new crypto users in developing markets, as well as explains how other factors like education and regulation affect the Web3 onboarding process in Africa.
Duffus started Fonbnk to provide a suite of on-ramps and off-ramps for people looking to enter the Web3 industry from developing countries. His fascination with digital payments is linked to the growth of mobile money on the African continent. Duffus observed people transfer balances and exchange them for other things with digital value on Facebook and in WhatsApp groups. The experience led to the creation of Fonbnk, and the company’s primary focus is on cash-first economies in Africa.
Owusu Akyaw points out how companies such as Fonbnk deploy on-ramps with interesting digital assets, like airtime, and how that significantly differs from how other people transact globally. Apps like Fonbnk allow users to convert airtime — digital credits for making calls and accessing the internet — into cryptocurrencies like USD Coin (USDC). Duffus explains that because many people are unbanked, building the next wave of financial technology on Web3 makes more sense.
On regulation and the future of Africa’s cryptocurrency ecosystem, the Fonbnk founder believes favorable regulations will come but may take a while and that more decentralized applications native to the continent will be shipped in the coming months.
“From a product standpoint, I definitely think you’re going to see much more on-chain activity, whether it’s the introduction of homegrown protocols as well as DApps and other projects that take into account the specific peculiarities, opportunities of the respective countrywide or continentwide markets, behaviors that uniquely exist in Africa. “
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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The Royal Navy will get 25 new warships – and could get three more – as the government indicates where its planned rise in defence spending will go.
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News there are 28 new ships and submarines in the design or construction stage at the moment for the UK’s armed forces.
He said 22 ships are “already in the system” – but there is less clarity over six new warships he announced for the Royal Marines today.
The defence secretary said that the government is committing to three of the new “versatile” ships for the Marines, “and then possibly another three as well”. He later said the final three are “in the design phase”.
He also announced two of the ships being built – type 26 and 31 frigates – will be equipped with land-attack missiles so they will be capable of attacking targets on shore.
Mr Shapps said this is a “very, very large shipbuilding programme, a lot of warships, the golden era of shipbuilding here”.
He added: “It’s all possible because just last month we agreed as a government to spend 2.5% of our GDP on our defence sector because we think it’s very, very important to make sure that those who would seek to do us harm are put off, that they are dissuaded because they can see that we’re serious about our defence.”
But defence spending fell in the early years of the Conservative government, which has been in power for 14 years, and spending was not boosted when Ukraine was invaded in 2014 or 2022.
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Mr Shapps said the Tory pledge is different to Labour’s because the Conservatives have “set out a timeline”.
“We’ve also said how we would go about largely funding this, and that’s by reducing the size of the civil service, which is much bigger than it was before COVID,” he said.
“We want to get it back down to the size it was before and use that money to spend on defence.
“I have to say, as defence secretary, with everything that I know in this role, that I think that the Labour position presents a danger to this country because it will send a signal to our adversaries that we’re not serious about our defence if we won’t set out that timetable.”
Labour’s shadow work and pensions minister Alison McGovern said she is “sceptical” about the Conservatives’ claim about how they will fund the spending rise.
She said Labour has had to pledge the rise for when the economy allows “because of what the Conservative Party have done to our economy” – as she accused Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak of implementing “big unfunded tax cuts”.
Ms McGovern added: “I think everybody would expect Rachel Reeves as the shadow chancellor to say, well, we will make our plans when we’ve got access to all of the books, all of the details of Ministry of Defence spending.”
Mr Shapps said the government did not spend as much on defence previously because countries such as China, North Korea, Iran and Russia were not such a threat.
The defence secretary added: “We were living in very, very different times.”
He said the government has also added £24bn to the defence budget over the past couple of years and the UK is “by a country mile the largest spender on defence in Europe, with the second largest in NATO after only the US”.
Discussing the UK’s current fleet, Mr Shapps said sister ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark are due to come out of service in 2033-2034 but the defence secretary said they will not be scrapped before that.
Albion and Bulwark are currently used as the Royal Navy’s landing platform docks to transport the Royal Marines.
Mr Shapps also announced HMS Argyll and HMS Westminster, two frigates with a combined service of 63 years, are to be retired, with HMS Argyll sold to BAE Systems to be used to support apprentice shipbuilder training.
The new ships being built include Type 26 and Type 31 frigates in Scotland, Astute and Dreadnought submarines in Barrow-in-Furness, and Fleet Solid Support ships in Belfast and Devon.