foreign
[Music]
Defcon
how's everybody doing today
So today we're going to talk about
Africa part of the world that we all
know but oftentimes overlooked but
before we start I want to ask you how
many of you here are from Africa
awesome how many of you have been to the
continent before
how many of you have worked with people
collaborated invested in
how many of you are Africa curious
awesome so
um we're here to talk about you know a
beautiful continent that means a lot to
me a little bit about myself I'm from
Ethiopia grew up in Kenya and Tanzania
lived in Nigeria and when I was growing
up the predominant narrative is that you
are at the bottom of the pyramid and if
you want to do big things in the world
you got to leave the best building was
the airport the best road was the road
to the airport and so I followed that
narrative move to the West for about
eight years I worked in experimenting
with immigration systems to find holes
within the Gated world so that we can
have a Global Talent base and a
borderless vision and then I discovered
web3 and where web3 made sense to me was
actually through the Africa lens and
that's a vision I want to share with you
today
so the predominant narrative we've been
using so far is that African needs
crypto right let's Bank down banked
that's been the narrative from day one
let's pull people out of poverty let's
develop I develop a nation let's make a
real impact
um let's fight corruption and create
Financial inclusion and there's a lot of
sort of moral based narratives that
we've been using so far in all of these
make a lot of sense
but there's a different narrative I
think it's important for us to really
explore and that is
what if it is actually web free that
needs Africa to fulfill its full
potential
and for the last
for the last 10 years plus we've been
talking about Mass adoption we've been
talking about bringing in a billion
people into this space to get people who
actually use the technologies that we're
building for daily things that people
rely on we want web3 to be plan a not
plan B and I believe that's where Africa
plays a role and that's the narrative
that we're going to unpack today
but before we do that I want to kind of
do a bit of a high level overview
um around the demographics and really
understand where the continent is right
now
so let's look at demographics Africa was
has 1.4 billion people 70 of us are 75
of us are under 35 the median age is
about 19 years old where the youngest
population and the fastest growing and
also the fastest population that's
urbanizing but that's not just the
picture the other part of it is that
we're growing really really really fast
by 2050 we're expected to be almost 2.8
billion people 50 of that population is
concentrated in just seven countries and
we're going to expect about a third of
the world's young people are going to be
in Africa just to put that in
perspective just in the next 18 years
there's going to be twice as many young
people in Africa as in China
50 more than in India and three times as
many young people in Africa as Europe
and the US combined
so if we're talking about users if we're
talking about Talent base if we're
talking about the future Workforce of
the world that's going to be in Africa
the other bit is around the economy and
this is a mixed image here so about 457
million sub-Saharan Africans actually
have a bank account and 370 million
adults don't
there's a lot of statistics around
unemployment about a third is considered
unemployed but I believe it's a big
bigger number than that and we expect
about 350 million Africans today are
considered middle class and the
definition of middle class kind of
varies at the moment cost of living is
really going up and so
um you might be considered middle class
but you're not thriving
43 of the population is considered is
expected to be middle class by 2030.
um but if we look at aggregate numbers
there's actually huge amount of capital
Africans are spending 6.3 trillion
dollars of consumer and business
spending expected by 2030 and 4.2
billion of that is B2B
so Africa is not just poor population
that the world needs to go save it's
population made of people who actually
have an ability to create and spend the
other part of the narrative like
understanding is around technology and
this is also very mixed
um we have 590 million Africans who have
accessed the internet a lot of that is
coming from Mobile use and we're
expecting six percent mobile adoption
year on over year
and the other bit is mobile money is
huge and that's concentrated in very
specific countries so we have 448
million Africans actually registered to
use mobile money but only 18 of them are
active on a monthly basis we see a huge
concentration of that in countries like
Kenya where more than 70 percent of the
population is using m-pesa and I was
quite kind of confused when I found that
there's 250 billion dollars being
transacted through m-pesa in Kenya but
the GDP of the country is only 110
billion so it kind of shows you how the
economy is very Dynamic and a little
different from how we think about it
crypto
um we have last last year 105 billion
dollars transacted which is a very small
amount of the global uh uh total volume
transacted it makes about two percent
but we're seeing a thousand two hundred
percent growth and kucoin expects 2500
growth of users since last year but the
interesting bit here is actually the
majority of it 88 of the money that's
transacted uh is for cross-border
transfers and a lot of the transfers are
happening at a peer-to-peer level
um and under one thousand dollar
transaction makes up a huge part of the
volume so we're seeing a lot of small
retail users getting into crypto
there's a new exchange that's launching
soon and they haven't even launched it
it's been a few months since they put
this out but they already have 2.3
million people on the wait list for the
download so if you're thinking about
volume of people getting into this space
there's a lot of that happening in
Africa
um but the interesting bit is the
biggest entry point and the biggest part
of the conversation there is speculation
and gambling and there are big events
bigger events than Defcon that are
happening very regularly to get people
onboarded but it's primarily around you
know trading and just making quick bugs
but there's a huge population that's
actually curious about what it means to
work in this space a couple of weeks ago
I met the guy who leads the largest Dev
community in Kenya and he said basically
his entire committee is really curious
about this space but they're trying to
figure out what the hell is web free
so why are with all of these aspects why
is Africa unique from everyone else like
why should we think about Africa as the
main thing that we're three needs to
achieve its full potential and to do
that I think we really need to
understand why the current Paradigm is
not working for Africans if you see the
world as a food chain Africa is really
at the bottom of that food chain and the
current geopolitical economic structures
lock the continent in that position and
so basically the only option many people
have to get out of there to get into
this place of emancipation is through
web3 let me give you a few examples of
why this current Paradigm is not working
first we actually don't control our
money 40 out of 54 African countries
prints the money overseas it is England
Germany and France that do most of it
and they say six percent of the entire
currency that's been printed
um as a fee and there are a lot of
stories about money being lost in
shipments and all of that
um
that's not only the part of the equation
so in 2011 the United Kingdom actually
withheld about a billion pounds of money
that was supposed to be shipped to Libya
for political reasons so once that
president has been said you actually
don't control your money
the other interesting thing that I've
been learning is that 14 African
countries are part of this thing called
the CFA it still stands it's called the
French colonies of Africa where they
basically created a euro-pegged currency
um and in order to use that in parallel
with the local currencies they have to
deposit 50 percent of their reserves in
French treasuries
um and what that also means is basically
there's been devaluations that have
happened and debugging that actually the
French government has created as a
result of what's happening in Europe and
this countries basically don't control
their money how many of us have heard of
the Central African Republic that made
Bitcoin part of a legal tender
that was an act of desperation basically
saying hey if we don't control our money
we have nothing to lose
global trade is very expensive and
pretty much impossible this huge
currency devaluation in many African
countries and there's chronic Forex
shortage just to give you an example
just in Nigeria and Ethiopia in Nigeria
there's 500 a month limit of how many
dollars you can get out on a monthly
basis in Ethiopia you have to sign up on
a line and wait up to six months just to
get dollars out if you're doing a small
business how on Earth can you actually
import export do basic things if you
don't have access to dollars in trade
with the rest of the world
that image I took it last week
um I was in Lagos Nigeria and I tried to
change a hundred dollar bill and that
was the stack of uh Nigerian naira that
we received and so yeah you're walking
around the Bulge pocket
um of a lot of dollar bills
close to 10 percent uh we pay about 10
Bank fees to transfer any money in and
out of the continent and sadly as a
continent only 15 percent of our trade
is within ourselves the rest is with the
rest of the world and that's a lot of
like trade issues and all of that and we
spent about five to ten billion dollars
in Swift fees which is massive and many
people are locked out of web to economy
because they don't have a credit card
when I was in Ethiopia applying for
college I had to borrow a credit card
from people to actually submit
applications and so many people still
don't have international credit cards
and because of that now the world will
not take African money bequil cannot
participate in the global economy that
way
the world is gathered for Africans
borders are closed for Africans there's
supposed to be so many Builders there
was there were planned to be here they
couldn't get visas to be here
um African passports are the worst in
the world to carry around when I was
traveling around in my Ethiopian
passport I used to wear a big cross on
my neck just so that border control
doesn't confuse me with the terrorist
and you talk to many Africans who are
traveling around the world there's this
thing called immigrant anxiety that's
because for whatever reason doesn't
matter who you are what you're doing the
world is shut for you
many Africans make the bottom of the
list in applications job applications
and all of that is the least trusted
population for employment and Africans
make the least money in technology and
I'm a little sad to see that also
happening in web 3 where dozens of
builders that I've been speaking with
they're earning about fifteen to forty
thousand dollars a year compared to
Global counterparts for doing the same
work or earning a lot more for the same
work so I think that's something we've
got to change
now there are being small steps to
improve this Paradigm there's a
pan-african single trade zone that's
developing their internal Payment
Systems banks are creating in order to
reduce dependence on foreign currencies
and their cbdc is growing like in naira
but these are very small steps now my
biggest issue with some of this is that
even though we're trying here that
we're not the institutions are not
really set up to meet the needs of the
young people you go and meet a lot of
young people they're very hungry they're
driven they want to thrive they don't
want to just survive they want to have a
piece of this world just like the rest
of us they want to do real things they
want to maximize their creative
potential and basically institutions as
we know them are not set up to meet that
need
so what do we do
well in order to instead of just trying
to fix this Paradigm from within
the answer to me is transcending the
current paradigm
and part of that is building what I
believe to be a borderless economy in a
borderless society
to me what that means is actually
emancipation path to self-determination
and when I talked to a lot of young
people on the continent they say wait a
minute you can participate in a global
economy no one really cares who you are
where you're from you can work you can
earn Global income by paying local
salary you can collaborate with people
from all over the world you can build
communities you can own part of the
internet you can have part of this space
and actually build tools and protocols
to build the future economic
infrastructure of your continent
people's eyes light up because this
means freedom this means moving out of
the con suppressing infrastructure that
we have there
so I want to give you a few examples of
what this borderless economy could look
like one of the areas is Talent
I'll give you a few stories and examples
of people I've been meeting recently one
of them is Ken he's a student at Lagos
University the school has been in huge
strikes so far and he got into crypto
through the blockchain association in
the university and then he kind of
started figuring the space out in within
one year he learned about defy All The
Primitives and really started getting
involved in a lot of protocols and now
he's part of uh top Mira governance Dao
and we're collaborating and he's one of
the best performers that we have in the
Dow and there was no one who held his
hand in learning about this whole space
from scratch
another person is Victor who I met
recently as well from Kenya he's an
architect and he discovered crypto just
speculation and then he said wait a
minute if I'm trying to build a career
in architecture it's going to take me 20
plus years to even get to somewhere
decent what about teaching myself the
rails of crypto and then he taught
himself solidity on YouTube again
without anyone holding his hand and
figured his way around a lot of D5
protocols and dials and now he's doing
smart contracts
um he's working on Smart contract
solutions for uh uh a major D5 protocol
and he's doing all of that anonymously
so no one even knows he's a Kenyan guy
there's a lady called Sherry she's a
photographer in Kenya as well and she's
been struggling to feed herself and look
after herself and she discovered nft
space she locked herself up in her room
learned the whole space in three days
started minting nfts using her
photography and he's been earning real
income and is now building community of
bringing other nft artists into this
space these are just very few examples
and there are so many many more
self-taught Africans who are getting
themselves into this space working
creating participating many of us know
African culture all over the world
but it's just now that African creators
are being able to capture part of the
value from the things that they're
building
another area that's really interesting
is trust many African countries are very
low trust environments meaning there are
no trusted intermediaries so there are
very few trusted intermediaries that can
actually enable economic and various
activities between people
and that is actually really critical
because here in Western places we talk
about
um web 3 kind of uh these intermediating
our economy right but you go to places
like that actually where there are no
trusted intermediaries You're Building
from the bottom up
and to me that means basically
um Africa is where decentralization has
found the best product Market fit
that is where you can actually build a
lot of tourist infrastructures from the
ground up
let's look at Finance we talked about
access to Forex right earlier on so
actually go to many African countries
you can access stable coins a lot easier
and faster you can access dollars and so
many people are bypassing Banks using
stable coins now think about the global
remittance industry that is massive and
that is really huge and that's where
actually we can build borderless finance
and really accelerate the growth and
development of many communities there
the other bit is looking at D5
applications that have been built on top
of mobile payments that's a really huge
space because access to credit is very
very scarce it's a very small number of
people who can actually access that
the local debt providers charge between
10 to 27 interest a month
that's really really Sharky and really
terrible so this is the space is huge to
transform this area and these are just
very few examples and there are so many
more ways that this borderless economy
bottle of society is manifesting in the
continent and we should expect basically
more Africans getting to this space in
masses to work and build develop and
consume
so here in web 3 we're talking about how
to bring the next billion we need more
users and more Builders who rely on it
for their daily lives
we want this space to be plan a not a
plan B when we're sitting in our cushy
chairs and kind of comfortable
environments where the system is kind of
working for us but we want to improve it
it's a lot harder to reach Mass adoption
but when you're going to places where
it's a very low starting point then
actually you have huge momentum huge
growth huge adoption huge creation that
can happen in this environment so
there's so many ways to build this and
we have a very low starting point what
are something on the mountains we can
climb in this space there's a lot to do
I'll share with you some of the
mountains that I feel inspired and
motivated to climb first is education
and we talk about education in so many
ways there's so many protocols and layer
ones from the continent talking about
education but actually it's marketing to
onboard a lot of people to use it let's
talk about education starting from a
place of values and why is this
important well many people and many
young people in Africa get into crypto
primarily through speculation and
they're actually their Learning Journey
is determined by the algorithms of
Facebook and Twitter and sorry YouTube
and Twitter so if you land on some
coin Shilling YouTube page everything
else you keep learning is going to be
very much related to that so it's quite
narrow way of entry point and I think
this needs to be a lot of work of
actually embedding why are we here why
is this space actually made for them
and we gotta create infrastructures for
people to learn to learn as I talked
about there are a lot of people getting
into the space on their own but how do
we really accelerate that to hundreds
and millions of people to get into this
space
and then developing actual core skill
sets so that people can come and work in
this space that is already happening but
I think we can really do a lot to
accelerate that space
the other one is just having more
Founders solving their continence
problems and we need so much of that
they're local Founders but we need
thousands and thousands more Founders
and the biggest challenge is Founders
need Capital to build
and a lot of the capital on the ground
is very unsophisticated very few players
very short term and their new entrance
to this space that are using the
buzzwords of the day to basically create
short-term wins and I think in order to
do this really well we got to think long
term and long-term means in this case
that many Builders are creating the
roads that they're walking on in Western
economies a lot of web 3 was able to
move very fast because we have web 2 we
have something to lean on we have a lot
of core infrastructures to build on top
of but when you're going to environments
where you got to build that
infrastructure from the long from from
the bottom up you got to think long term
and that's actually where you can accrue
a lot of value and and build a core
economic infrastructures for the
continent
and the other bit also of uh and funding
space is uh supporting Grassroots
activities because that's where a lot of
the foundation is being created and
that's where public goods plays a big
role there's so many Grassroots players
using the same value system that we have
here helping develop the core
infrastructures of mass adoption in this
space and that's a huge gap on the
continent
the last bit is building community
and I'm talking about Community with the
principles and values of community
that really matters because there's a
lot of sort of extractive community
conversation that is happening around
the continent which is just trying to
get as many people to sign up get big
user base get you know large adoption
and you know that's fine but if you
actually many protocols go there with
the spirit of extraction what you end up
doing is raising a generation of
mercenaries
so actually when I got a lot of events
and I talked to the people there they're
like yeah we know what's going on you
like we're playing the game so helping
you build the numbers but when there's
something better everybody leaves
and I think that's a big challenge
because people are going not to build
community but to create the short-term
wins in order to look good and have the
numbers raise money inflate tokens and
all of that and if you actually want to
build community you got to think about
how do we increase the sphere and then
at the end of that we have a bigger Pie
as a result if you start looking at
Africans as not just consumers but as
producers
you are able to untap so much of the
potential and be part of their success
so that's to me like that's really what
feels extremely exciting and if any of
these mountains you're finding exciting
less Jam if you're thinking about
climbing other mountains let's figure
out how to support that work and
accelerate your journey because at the
end of the day
I think Africa will have a lot more to
contribute to this Webster movement and
we're here dreaming thinking building
and creating but if we want to actually
this infrastructure to be used on a
daily basis doesn't matter if it's a
bull market or a bear Market if we want
this space to be used to actually meet
people's needs and people to rely on and
to have the space to build on I think
Africa is the right answer for me thank
you