Manifesto for a pan-African crypto-currency

Excerpt from the forthcoming book "AFRICAN CYBERSTRATEGY – VOLUME 2"

Blockchain technology has a wide range of fields of application in the world, some of which we mentioned in the first part of this article. To this non-exhaustive list of solutions enabled by this innovation in Africa, we can add solutions to fight counterfeit medicines that decimate our poorest populations, solutions for awarding and tracking public contracts, and even solutions for managing copyright and intellectual property, which remain concrete and thorny problems in our societies. In this context, we can salute here the gradual emergence of the SIP platform, an initiative led by young Cameroonians who aim to rely on Blockchain to protect the inventions and intangible heritage of Africans in an increasingly digitalised and competitive world governed by the knowledge economy. For intellectual (and industrial) property has always been at the heart of global economic competition.

However, owing to its intrinsic properties explored above (safety, tamper-resistance, traceability, decentralisation, etc.), in view of its configuration and its initial use (bitcoin), as well as the socio-political-economic context that seems rather favourable and mature on the continent (according to several surveys, Nigeria was ranked the third country in the world with the largest volume of cryptocurrency exchange during 2020, after the USA and Russia; moreover, a recent statement by the ECOWAS parliament through its second vice-president Malam Chaibou Boucary encourages the use of cryptocurrency in this community zone; let us also note initiatives such as digital identity or the single digital market led by the African Union), the project that seems to us the most ambitious and the boldest to carry out via Blockchain technology for Africa is the creation of a crypto-currency, a digital currency with a pan-African vocation! All the more so since, as already mentioned in the first part, one of Blockchain's main assets is that it is one of the rare (if not the only) technologies that Africa can use in a way that escapes the control of the major powers. This makes it an opportunity to realise a project as sensitive as a digitalised currency. What would it look like? What would be its rationale and objectives? As a basis for reflection in attempting to answer this series of questions, we propose the manifesto below.

Taking note of the effective marginalisation of Africa and Africans in the Bretton Woods agreements signed in 1944, which still govern the functioning of the financial system and the monetary order in the world today; observing that this system largely favours Western countries to the detriment of so-called southern countries;

Taking note of the rapid emergence of a digital payment ecosystem in Africa, as well as the rise of the phenomenon of decentralised finance (DeFi) made possible by technological innovations and which fundamentally challenges this traditional financial and monetary order;

Aware of the long tradition of struggle for Africa's economic and monetary sovereignty led by several generations of pan-Africanists; of the will affirmed by the leaders of certain African countries and above all by the youth across the continent who wish to rid themselves of the colonial currency in favour of a continental currency…