The importance of staying consistently focused:
Five years ago, when I began convening the Africa Bitcoin Conference, I was driven by a simple conviction: that Bitcoin represented far more than another financial technology, that it offered our continent a chance to rethink one of the deepest structural constraints inherited from colonialism, monetary fragmentation.
Beautifully written and a well painted grim picture. I encourage you to read the article, but I'll try to sum up what Nabourema wrote here.
She starts by explaining a story many of us have heard before. Africa has many countries, and many currencies. There's a big issue in cross boarder payments, forceful currency conversions, predatory government loans, chaotic exchange rates that common people have no control over, and clear efforts to keep it that way. So, it's no surprise that when she first learned bitcoins fundamentals are rooted in clarity and fairness, she found hope. Hope that Africa can use, finally, a stable and fair monetary system as a foundation for genuine growth. She says at the end "The objective was never to build organizations that survive on Bitcoin. The objective was, and remains, to build an Africa that can thrive because of it."
You see, there's a big, nasty issue that she's bringing awareness to: Bitcoins message of sovereignty or freedom is being exploited by what she describes as an "NGO-style savior complex". She describes quite sadly that on the surface it may look like bitcoin is flourishing there in the continent as "Hundreds of Bitcoin initiatives now claim to exist across Africa. New projects surface almost weekly, new communities appear on social media every month, and new organizations announce, with great confidence, ambitious missions to transform the continent." But don't let that fool you. In her article she highlights these projects as initiatives as ungenuine. They are using the African people as proof of their "help" to receive clout and more importantly, funding from elsewhere. She writes: "the community itself remains largely unchanged, while the one person whose life consistently improves is the founder who built the project in its name."
You can tell she's worried. She's worried about her home, her people, and the state of Bitcoin in Africa currently. With the seemingly endless projects sprouting up resources and funding are being diverted away "from the builders doing serious work" and subjects, yet again, the very people being dubbed helped to exploitation. She desperately wants the objective to shift back to Bitcoin being used for African growth instead of Africans being used for the financial growth of a few grifters.
My thoughts:
It seems to me the issue is the same as everywhere else in the space. We need real users and we need users encouraging others to use. I suspect that will forever be true. I am hopeful, however. Perhaps I'm foolishly optimistic, I've been told such, but I can't help but smile when I think of the resiliency slowly being hardened underneath the immense weight of bullshit that sits on top of genuine growth and adoption. The grifting NGO-style groups she mentions, treasury companies, financialization of bitcoin, in fighting, commercial-scale mining, shitcoin scams, the funneling KYC squeeze of government and large-scale exchanges. Under all that weight and pressure, the diamond at the center of it, real adoption, slowly grows. Resilience grows, users grow, Bitcoin grows.
Well written! Bitcoin is the currency for freedom yes! But have you ever thought of this that one day in the future, it could develop into one world currency?
CBDCs and CADCs is likely to develop into one world currency. My opinion. Bitcoin, unlikely, I think.
More about CADCs, here: #1478998
I think my question for a longer time now is: if you are doing genuine transformation, do you even need to mention the word Bitcoin? Because yes, of course you're using Bitcoin... but what are you actually doing? Bitcoin just facilitates payments. You don't go on a marketing tour about what accounting software you're using or what brand of water you buy for your employees' hydration requirements.
In fact, I'm starting to believe that there are only 2 possibilities:
I'd be more likely to send sats to a real thing that mentions Bitcoin nowhere except on the donation page before anything that anywhere mentions Bitcoin. It's a disqualifier.
This sentiment was also expressed at a recent conference. The article raises important issues, including whether "western" bitcoiners should be involved in bitcoin projects on the continent at all. The warning is important. Is there a path forward beyond "let people discover bitcoin for themselves"?
Yes. I think there is a path forward. The key is to support rather than direct. Local communities should should be supported with funding, tools, education, mentorship, and open-source resources, without imposing agendas. Bitcoin grows strongest when it's adopted voluntarily and adapted to local realities.
This is great. So is this:
I am a bit concerned about the track-all-the-things undertone in this paragraph but agree with the general sentiment.
A lot of these type of things are measured. At least they're being heralded frequently enough.
But still, funding campaigns seem to work much better if you paint a pretty, printable picture rather than actual impact because that is what the funding parties want to put on their social timelines.
I don't consider monetary fragmentation the deepest structural constraint inherited from colonialism.
But even if it were so, expecting Bitcoin will help fix that is nothing to expect having visible results in the few years it existed. In fact, it spurred greater fragmentation with the whole crypto gang showing up to profit.
Well written