Blockchain in Africa: A Chain that Frees Us and Why It Still Matters

In this piece, we make a case for why we are still long on blockchain and share details of blockchain companies in the venture studio. Please feel free to reach out to us for collaborations and investment discussions.

Blockchain still matters and opportunities abound for Africa. In a low trust, cash-strapped economy such as Africa, blockchain infrastructure can be a beacon of trust and liquidity.

If you’re staunchly pro-crypto, caught up in the zeal of countless enthusiasts, banking on the perpetual rise of crypto in a zero-sum game, you’ve missed the point. Similarly, if you’re firmly anti-crypto and preoccupied with self-proclaimed knights exploiting a gold rush for personal gain while disregarding crypto’s core principles under a veil of secrecy, you’re still not grasping the whole picture.

When you consider FTX, don’t forget Mt. Gox and the numerous headline-grabbing crypto scandals that preceded it. These incidents serve as a reminder that, like any innovative technology, it’s the bad actors who commit fraud, not the technology itself.

When we claim that blockchain offers freedom, we aren’t referring to crypto’s supposed role in redistributing wealth and bridging the wealth gap for Africans and African Americans. This notion is misleading and hardly holds any truth. Experts and skeptics have justifiably voiced their concerns, suggesting that such a deception is meant to exploit humanity’s innate desire for quick financial gains.

So is blockchain a scam? no. A key value of blockchain technology is in its transparent mechanisms, and it is these same mechanisms that ultimately took FTX down.

When we say blockchain brings freedom in Africa, we are talking about the core values of blockchain that matter to us, such as transparency, security, immutability, decentralization and trust, over highly debated values like censorship resistance.

We are excited about the programmability superpowers which have birthed superfast remittance, transparent fractionalization, asset liquidity, wage streaming, micro-transactions, non-fungible tokens for financial, digital and physical assets/liabilities/intellectual property, digital asset registers and introducing efficiency into slow laggard systems in global trade.

We also recognize that not everything can be or should be on blockchain – technically it’s easier to write to a sql database than write to a blockchain database. Blockchains require many nodes and consensus mechanisms etc to be useful; web 2 tech is easier than that. However, it’s clear that the benefits outweigh the costs in systems that are more efficient when you throw in decentralization, transparency, and immutability. (side advice to founders: not everything should be blockchain or Ai powered, investors can see right through it).

We also believe that governments would be a key partner in deploying blockchain for economic prosperity; especially as it pertains to its use for assets. We do not think governments hate blockchain, but just like any power custodian, they won’t give up power easily. As such, it’s up to builders to build far better unique experiences in blockchain and see how governments and people adopt.

Africa is ripe for disruption and innovation. Blockchain technology is a contributing tool to unlocking its potential. It is an exciting time to be alive and to be African as the continent embraces the possibilities of this revolutionary technology. So, be a blockchain impact-maximalist and join us on this mission – builder, investor, writer and critic,

Meet the blockchain companies we’ve backed from Day 0 at Fast Forward. I’m happy to connect you to the founders of any of the companies to learn more about backing them or partnering with them.

Unispend is a global crypto to commerce and cash protocol that lets crypto users buy stuff directly from their wallet or blockchain projects without the need for an exchange. Uchi and Joel previously worked with Microsoft, Shopify, Coil and are advisors to leading orgs such as Interledger and Virginia Blockchain Council.

Inferus is building the web3 Coinbase for next billion which provides one simple link to get paid on top blockchains without errors or mistakes. Founders have worked with Consensys (makers of Metamask).

Cribstock fractionalizes real estate and provides its investors with monthly returns. Assets are held in trust with a leading trustee firm in Nigeria. In the future, its ~20,000 investors and counting will be able to show proof of ownership on blockchain, thus unlocking opportunities to buy, sell and put up that ownership proof as collateral. The founders have over a decade of realtor, lending operations and engineering experience which they bear.

Thanks for reading up to this point.

Opeyemi Awoyemi, Lara Awoyemi