Blockchain will define next decade for Africa: Jimmy Nguyen at Africa Tech Festival

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Blockchain is going to be the key technology defining Africa for the next decade, Jimmy Nguyen told the audience at the recent Africa Tech Festival. The Founding President of Bitcoin Association spoke about how Bitcoin SV is enabling fast and cheap remittances for Africans, how the BSV blockchain can end corruption and why BSV is more than just a digital currency.

“We foresee a world for Africa where you have Bitcoin SV as not just a currency, but a ledger to send financial and data transactions,” Nguyen said.

He was speaking in a panel that explored the big tech trends that will define Africa for the next decade. He was joined by Razvan Ungureanu, the chief technology officer at telecom giant Airtel Africa, and Tunde Fafunwa, the lead advisor at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

#Africa – digital trends for next 10 years. #blockchain #BSV https://t.co/XHrA58rFbV

— Jimmy Nguyen (@iamJimmyWIN) November 12, 2020

Bitcoin SV will go beyond being a digital currency and address other key challenges facing the continent, Nguyen went on.

“We’ll see the use of the one big blockchain to create more honesty and transparency in government activities, because the BSV blockchain is open, auditable, and verifiable. This creates a better way to keep track of things like property ownership, both for tangible and intangible property. Voting will also be trackable on the BSV blockchain.”

Nguyen also believes that blockchain offers African countries the opportunity to leapfrog many Western nations into becoming the global blockchain hubs. While European, American and Asian countries have a head start with blockchain exploration, none has cemented its place as the global hub. African countries can take advantage of this and advance their blockchain initiatives past these Western countries.

Nguyen spoke about what makes Bitcoin SV superior to all other blockchain projects, citing its ability to scale massively, very low fees and stable protocol as just a few of the features that separate BSV from the rest. Now processing 2,800 transactions per second, BSV is way beyond projects such as BTC and Ethereum that have denied their users the ability to build applications for the masses.

Centbee is already showing what’s possible for Bitcoin users in Africa. The South African wallet provider has brought Bitcoin to the masses, allowing them to easily buy and spend Bitcoin SV. It also enables instant cross-border transfers on its Minit Money platform at a fraction of the usual fees, Nguyen said at the virtual event.

Tunde concurred with Nguyen, stating that blockchain technology has a big role to play in giving people ownership of their own data. On his part, Razvan revealed that Airtel, which has over 120 million subscribers in Africa, is exploring blockchain technology.

“On using blockchain technology, we’re very interested in that as a way to secure information and create traceability of this information. We are still in the very early stages on this,” Razvan revealed.

Nguyen summed it up, “I think the best way to understand Bitcoin SV is big business from small payments… Blockchain, in the form of Bitcoin SV, which has scaled big to allow massive transactions volume with tiny fees, allows an economy to grow by business models that use very small payments. That’s how you grow a digital economy.”