The South African Reserve Bank Is Warming Up To Blockchain Technology

The continent’s two most prominent central banks– the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), have decidedly different attitudes towards the notion of adopting virtual currencies.

While the CBN has recently warned the country’s financial institutions and citizens that virtual currencies are not legal tender, the SARB has displayed a willingness to emulate Tunisia by launching a blockchain-based digital version of the South African Rand. With bitcoin showing signs of maturing into a legitimate asset class, central banks the world over are grappling with a very real fear of missing out on the cryptocurrency wave. The surf’s up, it seems.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up is a chat with Alison Treadaway, director and shareholder of the South African eBilling and eMarketing software and services company, Striata. Alison unpacks the noble aims of South Africa’s imminent enaction of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI). She highlights some of the pain points that this ground-breaking piece of legislation is expected to address– gaps that other African countries will no doubt seek to plug through passing personal data laws of their own.

First published on AfricanTechRoundup.com.

 

Barclays Africa’s Blockchain Transaction A World First

It’s been a busy week for the continent’s fintech scene.

The past week saw MTN South Africa announce that it would be discontinuing its mobile money service due to “a lack of commercial viability”. This revelation comes just months after Vodacom South Africa ended its catastrophic attempt at copying and pasting Kenya’s M-Pesa magic.

Meanwhile, Madagascar became only the second African country after Tanzania to to roll out mobile money interoperability across the country’s mobile networks.

But easily one of the catchiest headline stories of the past week was about Barclays Africa’s involvement in what’s being celebrated as the very first blockchain verified financial transaction in the world by a major banking institution. The pilot deal between The Seychelles Trading Company Ltd. and Ornua saw the two companies harness a blockchain platform developed by Wave to trade a letter of credit. This transaction has to be Barclays’ most overt show of confidence in the potential of blockchain technology to deliver improved efficiencies in international trade.

Also in this week’s African Tech Round-up is a discussion I had with the Kenyan journalist, Eric Mugendi. Eric is Editor-at-large at iAfrikan.com, and also writes for his Tumbler called Kenyan Longreads. Eric joined me on the show to discuss the controversy that unfolded on Twitter around the African Tech Summit happening in London on September 29th. The event’s conspicuously mostly male, non-black/non-African speaker list included folks many people in the Twitterverse did not feel were representative of Africa’s tech ecosystem, and also managed to leave out many worthy participants. Eric and I went about unpacking the issues at play.

First published in AfricanTechRoundup.com.

Bitcoin and the Blockchain: Worth Embracing?

There are three prevailing views on bitcoin and the blockchain: 1) that it’s a scam, 2) it’s one of the most fascinating technological developments of the decade, and 3) it’s just another tech fad that’s not worth trying to grasp, nevermind fussing over. View number three is probably held by the vast majority of people on the continent. This week, Tefo Mohapi and I (Andile Masuku) will try and establish whether the hype around bitcoin and the various useful applications of the blockchain (which Africa has so far tentatively embraced) is justified.

Despite Wall Street’s gradual warming to bitcoin, and companies like Kenya’s BitPesa building clever service offerings on the back of the bitcoin blockchain, it remains to be seen whether bitcoin will go on to be widely accepted worldwide as a trusted measure of value, and whether the blockchain will be used to platform future technological innovation.

We’ve decided to make featuring listeners’ comments a permanent part of the show, and so this week we share comments made in response to last week’s debate: “Open Source vs. Proprietary Software: What is Best For Africa?”

As always, you can also expect all the week’s most important tech, digital and innovation news:

— Discover why there’s an outcry over South Africa’s recently-announced aerial drone laws,

— Get details on Automattic’s acquisition of WooThemes,

— Learn more about the MTN South Africa workers’ strike that saw 2,000 people down tools, and

— Find out which African country Kenya’s BitPesa is expanding into.