Africa's Crypto, simple and pure

Original Title: "Seven Years After Leaving Africa for Crypto, We're Still Talking About Faith"

Original Author: Athena

A few months ago, I set foot on the African soil once again. The dust raised by the speeding pickup truck, illuminated by the sunset, sketched a strange yet familiar impression of the African continent. Being an outsider provides enough space to step into our role as "global citizens" and reflect on who I am, what I am doing, and the relationship between the Crypto industry I am engaged in and the world.

Upon deeper exploration, it becomes clear that Crypto offers underdeveloped countries in Africa an opportunity to resonate with the world once again. From the faith and determination these countries have towards Crypto, we can see that they are no longer satisfied with compromises with the old systems. Instead of struggling and being dominated in the mud, why not fully embrace Crypto and rush towards a bright future?

At the recent 2049 event, I had the chance to sit down and chat with Athena (X: @Athenaweb33), discussing her unwavering faith since stepping into Africa and then into Crypto. She will continue her entrepreneurial journey with Wello.tech and delve deeper into Africa, pursuing her perhaps little-understood yet humble faith amidst the chaos of society.

The following is adapted from Athena's (X: @Athenaweb33) tweet, Enjoy:

As Token2049 came to an end, amidst deep social interactions with some colleagues and the overwhelming negative emotions flying around, I pondered the question, "Is the crypto industry really finished?" This reminded me of a small incident from a few weeks ago:

I have been living in Paris for two years now. One day, while working remotely at a small café near my home, I suddenly received a call from Uganda on WeChat. After the surprise, joy, and confusion of the greeting, I realized that leaving my traditional job in Africa to dive into Crypto was already seven years ago.

The call was from a senior advisor to the Ugandan government, who was in China accompanying the president for the China-Africa Cooperation Forum. During my years rooted in Africa, I worked for state-owned enterprises and the UN international development system, aiming to promote Africa's industrialization process and inclusive finance. With his help, we collaborated on various projects, including investment promotion between China and Uganda, and promoting women's handicrafts in Uganda, forming a friendship.

The stories from those years living in Africa could fill half a lifetime. There were grand moments, like laughing and chatting with the President of Senegal in his home, and there were near-death experiences, such as the unfortunate death of a close friend's boyfriend in a terrorist attack in the business district we always visited in Kenya. Due to a last-minute flight change, I avoided the worst aviation disaster in Ethiopian Airlines' history, but several acquaintances within my extended network, including my high school classmate and a friend's colleague, tragically lost their lives. However, my decision to leave Africa was resolute and firm.

This brings us to the unexpected encounter with Crypto. Interestingly, seven years later, while chatting with new and old friends in a café, the stories of Africa are a topic of interest for everyone, as if it were a utopia escaping from a difficult reality, a psychological refuge romanticizing exotic adventures.

However, I believe that the soul-searching questions and answers regarding the application value of Crypto are actually embedded in those seemingly romantic and ethereal stories.

The Shift of Value ------ Where is the Money, How to Spend It? Where to Spend It?

Everyone might know Binance's bold vision: to increase the freedom of money. So, when pondering whether the Crypto industry is finished, let's first take a high-level view and see how historical global value chain shifts have occurred, what stage we are at in historical development, and why Binance has such a slogan.

Let’s start with the old "narrative." Historically, there have been three global industrial revolutions. The "steam revolution," originating from the invention of the steam engine in Britain, greatly enhanced productivity, allowing small-scale artisanal textile workshops to achieve large-scale industrial production; during the "electric revolution," breakthroughs were made in electricity, chemicals, and heavy industries in the UK, US, Germany, and France, leading to the development and perfection of the entire European industrial system; the third revolution is the "information revolution" we are familiar with. The emergence of information technology, computers, electronics, and automation propelled countries like the US and Japan to become significant players in the world economy. The "Four Asian Tigers" (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) also rapidly industrialized in the latter half of the 20th century, developing advanced manufacturing and financial industries, integrating into the global value chain system.

It can be seen that each industrial revolution brought about changes in production relations due to changes in productivity, thus encouraging some countries to leverage their "comparative advantages" to participate in the global value distribution system. China benefited from the reform and opening up that began in 1978, learning from the advantages of the rise of Singapore and other Asian Tigers. By establishing special economic zones and industrial parks in developed coastal areas, utilizing China's low labor costs, large base, and hardworking "comparative advantages," along with an open market and foreign investment, China developed export-oriented manufacturing in coastal regions, becoming the "world's factory" and establishing an indispensable position in the global value chain distribution.

The intricate details of these grand industrial revolutions spanning over a century could be elaborated upon, but it is worth mentioning that each industrial revolution is also a process of wealth redistribution. Africa, due to its long history of colonization and various complex industrial policies and international political factors, has not been involved in this "cake-sharing" process.

So, is Africa really poor? The capital of Nigeria, Lagos, has the highest density of private jets in the world. After local payment channels were launched on exchanges, Africa's per capita trading volume far exceeded that of European and Asian countries. The wealth of the rich in Africa surpasses our general understanding and imagination. Due to Africa's rich resources, especially oil and agricultural resources, the upper class can live comfortably for generations on the primary industry of raw material exports; ordinary people are forced to scrape by in the tertiary sector—services, receiving only a fraction of the wealth and barely making ends meet. The entire continent lacks a manufacturing industry, and the financial sector is monopolized. Due to the lack of infrastructure, financial service costs are extremely high, making it difficult for ordinary people to have a bank account or afford bank transfer fees. The stark and absurd wealth disparity is a common reality for the ordinary classes in Africa.

During a research project for an international organization, the Djibouti government arranged for us to stay at the Kempinski Hotel, the most luxurious hotel in this impoverished East African tiny nation, costing $300 a night, which is the income of many locals for half a year. I still remember a moment vividly: on the beachside lounge chairs of this hotel, a white businessman was smoking a cigar and chatting loudly, while a black waiter stood before him with a tray, his back straight, his white shirt and red vest contrasting with his dark skin. He gazed at the mist over the Red Sea, his eyes filled with numbness and confusion.

At that time, our job involved a group of young elites with degrees in economics, finance, and sociology from top global universities, tasked with designing how international organizations should allocate aid funds to Africa, how to spend them, and how to ensure these funds would be effective. There was a British girl who had just graduated from Oxford; upon hearing we would be staying at a $300-a-night luxury hotel, she tearfully refused to check in, feeling it was a mockery of her project. However, when she saw the conditions ordinary people lived in—tin-roofed houses creaking in the 50-degree heat—she silently retracted her stance.

It was around that time that I decided to give up that job. Although what we were doing seemed compassionate, discussing industrial transfers, promoting Africa's manufacturing development, integrating into the value chain, and helping ordinary people enter factories while learning from China's and Southeast Asia's garment and shoe-making experiences, I personally spent a month in a Chinese factory in Senegal interviewing female workers and observing their production of low-grade Adidas and Nike sweatpants for export to Europe and America. But this was too slow; within the vast traditional "aid" system, the ones benefiting the most were probably not the African female workers being "taught to fish," but rather the senior clerks sitting in London offices writing papers and auditing projects, as well as us international organization elites staying in $300 hotels on business trips—data shows that as much as 70% of the funds were consumed in "proving how the money was spent, where it was spent, and generating audit and impact reports."

I began to see Blockchain, see Crypto, as the technology of the fourth revolution led by blockchain and artificial intelligence, which could change the fate of money, the fate of Africa, and the fate of the impoverished masses.

True Decentralization at the Market in Kampala

The son of the Ugandan Prime Minister established a Crypto organization a few years ago, gathering a few "second-generation officials" and tech enthusiasts who studied in the UK and the US to work on several small projects related to Crypto, such as enabling peer-to-peer Crypto transfers in places with no 3G network using non-smartphones. Africans understand Africans better; most locals use basic phones that can only make calls and send texts. Since many Africans do not have bank accounts and are unwilling to traverse half the city to find a Western Union or the few banks for transfers and remittances, the local remittance method is simple and straightforward: using USSD technology, people can send money directly to friends via SMS, with each person's phone number serving as their "wallet"/account, and their phone balance representing their account balance.

I personally experienced the smooth "registration, KYC, and transfer" process with friends from this organization: I bought a $50 phone at a telecom operator near the Kampala market, queued up, and the staff, who had performed the KYC process thousands of times, completed it in three minutes, helping me recharge "phone credit" with cash. There are numerous official and unofficial kiosks in the village; when you want to "cash out," you find the "village representative" on duty at the kiosk, send them an SMS to transfer money, and they give you cash. "Recharging" is the reverse process. The entire experience was seamless, and it was all peer-to-peer, with absolutely no third parties involved, completely eliminating trust issues. This product and process are not only available in the capital but have also been widely implemented in rural areas.

Later, I joined Binance, and my first year was dedicated to responding to CZ's vision of "mass adoption," laying down a truly blockchain and Crypto-based network in Africa, starting with the most basic charity projects. Binance Charity was born, creating the world's first completely "transparent" peer-to-peer donation platform. Due to the characteristics of blockchain, every internet user can supervise each Crypto donation, ensuring it directly reaches the wallets of Ugandan villagers without involving any third parties. Villagers then use Crypto to purchase potatoes, cabbages, and other goods from farmers who accept Crypto, with no fiat currency involved. When farmers need fiat currency, they periodically convert Crypto into local currency through local exchanges or OTC.

Later, we also issued the world's first (and possibly still the only) "value-stable coin" on Binance Smart Chain (now BNB Chain): the Pink Care Token. Unlike other stablecoins, the Pink Care Token is not pegged to any fiat currency "price," but rather to the value of goods: each Pink Care Token is linked to the "value" of a girl in Uganda using sanitary pads for a year. This project originated from conversations with locals while distributing potatoes and cabbages, where I discovered that "menstrual shame" still widely exists among local women. Due to a lack of sex education and the high cost of sanitary pads, many girls resort to using leaves and grass during their periods, leading to serious gynecological issues. Furthermore, many girls marry and give birth at the age of 14, and early pregnancies exacerbate the situation, directly causing many girls to die from infections during childbirth. Girls who receive Pink Care Tokens can "exchange" them for a year's supply of sanitary pads from our partnered eco-friendly sanitary pad suppliers.

To this day, I am still deeply moved that the Pink Care Token project received donations and active support from almost all the true leaders in the crypto space. A prominent figure personally took on the role of project ambassador, calling on all industry exchanges, VCs, and other participants to raise funds, promote, and establish the "Pink Care Token Alliance." At that time, the market was in a deep bear phase, and the industry was undergoing profound self-criticism and doubt, but the concept of value-stable coins, along with the entire process being based on blockchain's complete transparency and efficiency, served as a small validation of Crypto's social value. The value-exchange attribute of Crypto as "currency" is also reflected in such a simple manner.

As I increasingly struggled to understand the ever-complex business models and narratives filled with profound theories, especially as the industry fell into difficulties again, I often thought of the story-filled market in Uganda, always marveling at the clean, pure, and simple applications of Crypto. It is so unpretentious and rewarding. For instance, the farmers in Kampala who dared to embrace the challenges of the Crypto revolution received only 6 BNB. Perhaps they are the ones who truly have a steadfast faith in Crypto.

PayFi or FiFi

Returning to the bustling Singapore, at this year's 2049 event, PayFi has become a new hotspot. The new narrative of Payment + Finance has revitalized many desperate capital and projects. How the narrative is translated is not particularly important, especially as another big player joked that PayFi could also be called FiFi, since payment itself is finance. What is truly interesting and meaningful is that after going around in circles, we are beginning to return to the fundamental attribute of Crypto related to payments, beyond investment and speculation.

Just like the redistribution of value and wealth, the development of all things in the world follows the basic laws of history. From a product to an entire industry, what truly lasts is the product that generates positive value for society. Returning to this essence, our faith will not be so fragile and easily shaken.

I truly hope that after all these years of twists and turns, I can revisit those girls who bought sanitary pads with stablecoins and the farmers who used BNB for transactions. The original intention of Crypto might just be that simple.