Why Africa Stands to Benefit Most from Blockchain Technology

The Kenya Blockchain TaskForce is spearheading Blockchain Adoption among Governments in Africa

We can all agree that Africa is plagued with many problems. However, probably, the biggest challenge facing Africa is the future. In almost every single innovation and revolution, starting from the industrial revolution to the information age, Africa has almost always been at the back-end. Unless this changes, Africa will continue to play the catch-up game in relation to its developed counterparts.

This however does not have to be the case and the blockchain technology is one of such innovations that the continent needs to tap into and leapfrog the early developments of the information age.

How Blockchain Enables Africa to Leapfrog

The blockchain is a distributed database or ledger that can be used to effect transactions involving multiple parties, essentially, enabling collaboration while maintaining trust and openness. Such a technology has immense and diverse use cases, especially where trust and openness did not exist before.

In Africa, a lot of the challenges faced on the continent are born out of a lack of trust and trasparency. Africa’s economic crime rate stands at 57 percent in comparison to the global average of 36 percent. In addition, over 20 percent of fraud on the continent is as a result of overriding existing internal controls.

Think about the large cross-industry ecoysystems and public utilities that would benefit from the resulting trust and transparency of such a system. As globalization takes root and economies get connected, inefficiencies resulting from corruption and unfair distribution of wealth and resources can now be eliminated using this technology.

When it comes to government process, fraud and error in government organizations will be a thing of the past. The innovation roadblocks that prevented this from happening can now all be solved using the blockchain technology.

Looking Ahead

The recent creation of the Blockchain Taskforce in Kenya is a welcome sign in the right direction towards adoption and implementation of this technology. Kenya is one of the African countries taking the blockchain technology seriously and consequently, it stands to benefit most from adoption.

The Kenya Vision 2030 can only be achieved if technologies like the blockchain are adopted to solve some of the challenges facing the country and the continent in order to usher in a new, open, and transparent ecosystem that will make the country and the continent more competitive and efficient.



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