Africa boasts of over 1.2 billion consumers, fast-growing developing economies as well as hundreds of millions of unbanked people, all of which make the continent a haven of opportunities for crypto ventures. Crypto exchange giant, Binance is taking the leap forward to tap this market.
Last Friday, Benjamin Rameau, the Director of Binance Labs, published an explanation about the company’s commitment to invest in Africa. In the publication, he also called on supporters to help them connect with crypto-related African projects with excellent founders.
“We have no headquarters, no office, and no geographical boundaries. We are just as African as we are Asian or European. The blockchain revolution will be a global one and Binance Labs will consider investments in all non-sanctioned countries. In Africa, we feel very much at home and we want to deploy our capital there,” he explained.
Contrary to what may be speculated, Binance is turning to Africa based on a pure profit motive and not out of charity or even the need to diversify its global portfolio. In fact, the company’s officials believe that investing in Africa’s crypto market is the ultimate contrarian play of this era.
“Come 2018, the consensus view holds that the 21st century belongs to Asia; yet we believe that it will be Africa’s turn to surprise. Investing today in Africa could be the best trade of the century,” he explained.
Africa is The Future
According to Binance, the unbanked nature of a majority of the African population contains a provable possibility for huge growth. In essence, this could be achieved by having an entire generation of young and technology-receptive people come into crypto finance as their very first ever experience in as far as structured financial systems are concerned. This would, in turn, establish crypto as a default paradigm on the content which would certainly be a game-changer for the entire cryptocurrency industry.
“Access to financial services for saving, borrowing, and protection will provide the capital to fund entrepreneurs, provide a safety net for retirement planning and provide disaster relief. Renewed optimism about the future will arise when people are given the freedom to take on risk. Households will have fewer children and invest more per child on education when parents can pre-finance their retirements. This will form the backbone to the modernization of African economies,” Rameau added.
The growth of the African crypto economy will also create more opportunities for Africans to tap into the benefits that are offered by outsourcing to wealthier economies. Furthermore, crypto can also offer a stable alternative to some of Africa’s poorly performing national fiat currencies – this can be seen in Zimbabwe, for instance, where crypto has proven to a be a stable basis for the economy which has been ravaged by high inflation.
