Nigeria is the leader in crypto adoption rate among Sub-Saharan countries, though Ghana stands a good chance of overtaking the lead.
Analysts at Chainalysis presented a report on current trends in the crypto market in Sub-Saharan Africa. The ongoing leader in terms of the crypto adoption index in the region is Nigeria, which is 11th in the global ranking. But the researchers believe Ghana has the potential to overtake the lead.
Trading volume on Paxful, a local P2P exchange, has grown 100% in the past year and 400% in the past two years. Among the reasons for the growth is the large number of Nigerians who frequently visit Ghana and introduce locals to crypto transfers. Another reason is the urgent need for cheap ways to transfer money from abroad and the lack of similar services for fiat currency.
Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, commented on the situation for Chainalysis. He said problems with payment systems for international transfers mean that migrants have to pay almost €200 for every €1,000 they send home from Europe. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency transfers allow for quick and virtually free transactions. For this reason, their popularity is growing rapidly. The annual user growth from Nigeria on the Paxful platform was 55%, and from Kenya was 140%.
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) is actively developing its own CBDC to expand access to financial services for its citizens. Kwame Oppong, Head of FinTech and Innovation at the BoG, told this in an interview for Cointelegraph. The CBDC project E-Cedi was announced back in August 2021.
Recall that in Nigeria, eNaira was launched in October 2021, and since then it has undergone several major upgrades. The most recent one made it easier to create a wallet and make interbank transfers. According to the Nigerian government, the number of eNaira users exceeded 400,000 in May 2022.
