Cryptocurrency Ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa

African countries have a huge potential when it comes to developing the local crypto industry. A new report prepared by Arcane Research contains interesting details about the cryptocurrency ownership in African countries.

Importantly, African countries have some of the highest cryptocurrency ownership rates around the world. For example, South Africa is one of them. Interestingly, 13% of its internet users own or use cryptocurrencies. According to the report, South Africa ranked third around the globe.

Another country with a big economy, Nigeria took the fifth spot. In the most populous country of Africa, 11% of internet users own cryptocurrencies. It means that cryptocurrency ownership is more prevalent than in other countries. Notably, the worldwide average among internet users stands at 7%.

Cryptocurrency and African countries

Moreover, when people search for the term cryptocurrency, Uganda, South Africa as well as Ghana and Kenya feature in the top-10 countries on Google.

Importantly, people should keep in mind that Sub-Saharan Africa has a huge remittance market. Each year people spend billions of dollars to their home countries. However, they have to rely on slow and centralized remittance systems. Such systems charge transaction fees as high as 9%. Another option which is mobile payments is more expansive than centralized remittance systems. Mobile payments charge a fee of around 11%.

There are other issues as well. Transaction fees represent just one of them. Another problem is the high inflation rates in some African countries.

Unfortunately, the lack of clarity regarding the crypto regulations is a very serious problem. Almost 60% of African governments have to clarify their stance on cryptocurrencies. As a result, it will take more time to complete the process of crypto adoption.

However, despite the lack of proper infrastructure and regulations, Africans are ready to embrace cryptocurrencies. Consequently, many companies are willing to enter African markets.