Topic: Africa May Leapfrog Traditional Banking (Read 2190 times)

This is 100 % correct. I have a friend who lives in Tanzania and another in the DRC. They laugh at the idea of Bitcoin getting any sort of foothold in Africa for the next 10 to 15 years.

Um, what? The only electronics device these people own is a cheap cell phone. They have little to no infrastructure. No cable TV, Internet, paved roads - hell, in some places they don't even have electricity or running water but they do have a shitload of cell towers. If cell services are down how exactly is Bitcoin supposed to work?

I think they still do.... M-pesa rely on centralized telecommunication services and a central point of failure. Bitcoin is a much better alternative and more transparent for corruption and bribes, that are common in areas in Africa.

Would they leapfrog the traditional banking system..? Well at first I thought so....but I reckon, they still need to convert to fiat for most things, with limited merchants accepting Bitcoin now... So for a while... they would have to rely on some banking functions, until more merchants accept Bitcoin.

M-Pesa use on the entire continent of Africa was about $300 million (Sh26.5B) last year. Bitcoin's market cap is $3.6 billion with a B. If we took every single customer away from M-Pesa today it wouldn't help us that much. Obviously, Africans don't need it because they have M-Pesa.

They most probably will. m-Pesa is a classic example of something which developed in Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa#History

In 2002, researchers at Gamos and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, funded by Department for International Development UK (DFID), documented that in Uganda, Botswana and Ghana, people were spontaneously using airtime as a proxy for money transfer. Africans were transferring airtime to their relatives or friends who were then using it or reselling it. Gamos researchers approached MCel in Mozambique, and in 2004 MCel introduced the first authorised airtime credit swapping – a precursor step towards M-Pesa

So the people that have no bank accounts have no house. I like that logic.
It's obvious that banks can't be removed, at least not easily or quickly.

Education is always better than dumbed-down services. Bitcoin's killer apps for Africa may (should?) come from Africa or Africans.

Africa already grows enough food according to the World Bank:  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/29/africa-can-feed-itself

Giving alms to Africa remains one of the biggest ideas of our time -- millions march for it, governments are judged by it, celebrities proselytize the need for it. Calls for more aid to Africa are growing louder, with advocates pushing for doubling the roughly $50 billion of international assistance that already goes to Africa each year.

Yet evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment. It's increased the risk of civil conflict and unrest (the fact that over 60% of sub-Saharan Africa's population is under the age of 24 with few economic prospects is a cause for worry). Aid is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster.

Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population -- over 350 million people -- live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades.

In a similar vein has been the approach to food aid, which historically has done little to support African farmers. Under the auspices of the U.S. Food for Peace program, each year millions of dollars are used to buy American-grown food that has to then be shipped across oceans. One wonders how a system of flooding foreign markets with American food, which puts local farmers out of business, actually helps better Africa. A better strategy would be to use aid money to buy food from farmers within the country, and then distribute that food to the local citizens in need.

The most obvious criticism of aid is its links to rampant corruption. Aid flows destined to help the average African end up supporting bloated bureaucracies in the form of the poor-country governments and donor-funded non-governmental organizations.

In Zaire -- known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo -- Irwin Blumenthal (whom the IMF had appointed to a post in the country's central bank) warned in 1978 that the system was so corrupt that there was "no (repeat, no) prospect for Zaire's creditors to get their money back." Still, the IMF soon gave the country the largest loan it had ever given an African nation. According to corruption watchdog agency Transparency International, Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire's president from 1965 to 1997, is reputed to have stolen at least $5 billion from the country.

It's scarcely better today. A month ago, Malawi's former President Bakili Muluzi was charged with embezzling aid money worth $12 million. Zambia's former President Frederick Chiluba (a development darling during his 1991 to 2001 tenure) remains embroiled in a court case that has revealed millions of dollars frittered away from health, education and infrastructure toward his personal cash dispenser. Yet the aid keeps on coming.
 

90% where are you getting these stats from. Not even close according to this http://www.our-africa.org/poverty

People are going to need a place to exchange coins for cash. They're not just going to want to barter for food or goods.

Some 90% of the Africans live in poverty. But at the same time, there is a large community of the African nouveau riche, comprising of businessmen and migrants who have found jobs in the EU and North America. There are tens, if not hundreds of millions of people who use smartphones in the African continent. It will be foolish to ignore this large group.

You don't need exchanges. You could have remittances coming in and then bitcoin circulating through the sale of goods and services

Africa needs to leapfrog a way to grow enough food eat instead of having 30 countries supplement their diets. While they're at it maybe they can figure out how to grow some birth control so they won't need so much food. Bitcoin would be great for them to store their fifteen cents of disposible income per month. 

In a new report, "Africa Can Help Feed Africa", the World Bank looks at how the continent can prevent food shortages and unlock its massive agricultural potential. The general recommendations might be predictable for the institution known for its support of neoliberal policy, but they offer key recommendations to achieving food sustainability. The report looks at how opening up cross-border trade will increase Africa's potential food production, increase food security by improving access to food, and raise returns for small-scale farmers.

It begins with the basic premise that regions have natural food surpluses in certain staples and deficits in others; the key is to maximise output and get the food to where it's needed. Attempts at national self-sufficiency haven't worked and the effects of climate change will only make production more volatile, says the report. "Removing barriers to regional trade presents benefits to farmers, consumers and governments." Farmers will make more money from meeting the rising demand; consumers get cheaper access to food and benefits such as jobs from a growing agricultural sector; governments can better deal with food security.

I don't think they can leapfrog traditional banking. If they can't access the banking, how can they buy  or cash out bitcoin through the exchanges, which accept fiat money deposits for them to trade or transfer fiat money to your bank account for withdrawal?

not all of them(all country in africa) are so advanced and are confortable to use technology device, this is true for the sud africa, nor africa on the other hand is getting better, and they have nothing to envy to europe or usa(i have friend that live there, so i know a bit about it)

I think you're being pretty ignorant here. Africa is a massive continent and contrary to popular belief they don't all live in mud huts with no electricity. Even many impoverished African countries have a mobile phone but don't and can't have a bank account so bitcoin could really flourish over there. The internet isn't as scare as you might think either and is being implemented there at an astonishing rate.

It sound really simple and affordable. But I remember some threads like this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/why-is-africa-stuck-in-the-stone-age-897306 And I wonder if they in Africa really ready for bitcoin if they have more pressure concerns right now? I would like them to be able to reach out and embrace cryptocurrency but I feel that it is indeed to early for some African countries.