🔎ANALYSIS: Nigerians Are the Most Crypto-Curious People in the World
As crypto markets cool off, Nigerians continue to lead blockchain adoption and interest 📈
Africa is quickly becoming the center of the blockchain world, with new studies regularly reaffirming the prominence of crypto and blockchain in the minds of Africans.
⚡️ Bloomberg reported in August that crypto-related search traffic was highest in Nigeria, where search traffic was around 72% higher than the next closest country, the United Arab Emirates.
⚡️ Nigeria ranks sixth in the world in NFT search rankings, somewhat reflecting the priorities of Nigerian crypto users.
What does this mean for Africans?
Earlier this year, we reported that crypto adoption in Africa increased by more than 2,670% in 2021. The sources we quoted identified remittance as the primary motivation behind crypto use in the continent. As we highlighted in that article, cross-border transactions using blockchain services and cryptocurrencies are significantly cheaper, quicker, and more convenient than traditional remittance services.
As outlined in this article published by World Bank, a simple transaction account can be a strong enough foundation to help people step out of poverty, opening the door to critical services such as savings, payments, credit, and insurance. In many regions across Africa, accessing such services continues to be a challenge: distance, underdeveloped infrastructure, corruption, and more all contribute to this massive problem that continues to disadvantage Africans across the continent.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) tools can offer Africans access to these basic financial services, no matter where they are, or what their local financial infrastructure looks like. With DeFi, anyone with a phone and an internet connection can now access these critical building blocks for financial security.
The practical benefits of blockchain that Africans have embraced could be behind the continued interest in crypto assets, even as the rest of the world lose interest in the asset class. Bobby Ong, the co-founder of CoinGecko who published the research into crypto search interest, noted:
“The countries at the top of [the search interest] list appear to be keenest to buy the dip, and highlight their long-term outlook for cryptocurrencies.”
Blockchain and crypto narratives of transparency, democracy, and fair access to financial services are particularly strong in Africa, where as much as 57% of the continental population remains unbanked. Rising inflation and public corruption are also causing individuals to look for alternatives outside of their local currencies.
Emerging technologies are also capturing the minds of African innovators. According to recent data from Roland Berger and published by the United Nations, Africa has the highest percentage of entrepreneurs of any continent. Many of these entrepreneurs are turning to crypto, enticed by the incredible opportunities in the emerging sector.
It seems then that Africa is the perfect place for crypto to develop and boom. A strong entrepreneurial culture, pervasive narratives for a better future, and strong evidence of the benefits of crypto are combining to sustain interest in crypto, particularly in Africa’s most populous nation.
At Cassava, we’re proud to be building the infrastructure for widespread Web3 adoption in Africa. Our product suite will give builders the tools they need to create Web3 applications or to bring their existing apps onto the blockchain. Users can earn rewards for doing the things they love and begin to explore all the possibilities that Web3, DeFi, and NFTs have to offer.
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