Grace Ashiru
From fintech to agritech, African technology innovators demonstrated that they are at the vanguard of change on the continent during the recent Africa Money & Defi Summit in Accra, Ghana.
David Boye-Doku, the co-founder of PayBox, said that Africa could skip ahead to decentralized finance (Defi) and get around the problems of cross-border finance with the help of blockchain and web3.
Through its NTF V Tech project in Ghana, TC paid for fintech startups PayBox, Motito, Pal, and Makewehelp to show their products at the West Africa Money and Defi event. Fintech leaders like MFS Africa and Paystack, as well as companies focusing on Web3 like Revio and Mazzuma, will be there.
It was amazing. Many Nigerians were looking for products that would work with web2.0 and web3 blockchain. “We told them what we were doing in Web 2.0 and what we had started on for Web 3, and they were interested,” Boye-Doku said.
PayBox started by giving small and medium-sized businesses mobile payment solutions.
The next step is adding web3 rails to mobile payments so that small businesses and young people in Africa can use a local wallet to pay for things worldwide. “Your phone number can be turned into a cryptocurrency wallet so you can easily send money across Africa,” Boye-Doku said.
Web3 wallets can be on the web, your phone, or even hardware. The user can access decentralized blockchain-based apps that act as gateways to crypto assets through their relatively simple interactions. This lets users send and receive these assets instantly through a mobile phone number, an email address, or a crypto address.
Boye-Doku thinks the central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the key to Africa’s fast economic growth and development. “It would make it possible for money to move freely and quickly, with almost no fees, and convert crypto into currencies. This means that we can spend money in our domains and also do business with people outside of our domains,” he said.
We talked to someone from the Bank of Ghana, and they told us they want a token to put on top of the Ghanaian CBDC. We’re already making an exchange token for them to use,” he said.
ITC made it possible for Paybox to go to the summit. “ITC has been amazing,” said Boye-Doku. “They are very important to startups because they give them access to information, training, and a global presence.”
