Africa Development Promise

At 10 —Africa Development Promise Marks a Significant Milestone

Africa Agen­da sends hearty con­grat­u­la­tions to Africa Devel­op­ment Promise (ADP), which recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed 10 years of impact­ful work in Col­orado, Ugan­da, and Rwan­da. At a 10th anniver­sary lun­cheon on August 15th in Den­ver, Mon­i­ca Labiche Brown, ADP’s founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor, said the orga­ni­za­tion’s pro­grams sup­port 12 agri­cul­tur­al coop­er­a­tives in Ugan­da and Rwan­da. In 2021, the orga­ni­za­tion expanded…

The Growth of Mobile Money Transfer in Africa

In 2021 the glob­al mobile val­ue stood at 1 tril­lion dol­lars. The African con­ti­nent account­ed for about 70 per­cent of the sta­tis­tics. The adop­tion of mobile mon­ey in Africa con­tin­ues to rise with Glob­al Sys­tem for Mobile Communications(GSMA) fig­ures high­light­ing an increase from 27.5 bil­lion in 2020 to 36.7 bil­lion in 2021. Mobile Mon­ey Enables Growth…

Dimbabwe's Development

A New City Aims to Boost Zimbabwe’s Development

At the 77th ses­sion of the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly, African lead­ers called for the West to ease sanc­tions on Zim­bab­we. Recent­ly the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca sanc­tioned 56 com­pa­nies and 85 indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing cur­rent Pres­i­dent Emer­son Mnan­gag­wa. Locals in the coun­try say the sanc­tions play a role in Zim­bab­we’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment as indus­tries have…

Central African Republic president launches crypto initiative following Bitcoin adoption

Faustin-Archange Touadéra, pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, has announced the gov­ern­ment will be back­ing an ini­tia­tive cen­tered around devel­op­ing the country’s blockchain infrastructure.In a Mon­day announce­ment on Twit­ter, Touadéra said the CAR gov­ern­ment would be launch­ing San­go, a cryp­to ini­tia­tive pro­posed fol­low­ing the country’s adop­tion of Bit­coin (BTC) as legal ten­der in April. Accord­ing to Sango’s web­site, the gov­ern­ment intends to launch the pro­gram dur­ing a July 3 event in which the pres­i­dent, mem­bers of his cab­i­net and indus­try experts will dis­cuss the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture need­ed for the CAR to enter the cryp­to space, as well as the legal frame­work for the coun­try. The San­go project’s plans include build­ing a “legal cryp­to hub” aimed at attract­ing busi­ness­es and glob­al cryp­to-enthu­si­asts, expand­ing the adop­tion of Bit­coin in the coun­try, and cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al “cryp­to island” — a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone in the meta­verse that will seem­ing­ly have an equiv­a­lent space in the phys­i­cal world. Accord­ing to San­do, the CAR plans to have a ded­i­cat­ed legal frame­work for cryp­to in place by the end of 2022.“The ambi­tious strat­e­gy to quick­ly build a suc­cess­ful econ­o­my can only rely on new tech­nolo­gies that have tak­en the world by storm and tak­en mon­ey to anoth­er lev­el, with Bit­coin as a watch­word,” said Touadéra. With #Bit­coin as #legal­tender & inspi­ra­tion, our coun­try opens a new chap­ter in its inspir­ing jour­ney towards a brighter future via #blockchain #tech. Every­one is wel­come to wit­ness the San­go Gen­e­sis Event that will be broad­cast on the 3rd of July, on https://t.co/LIQiKGhcBS. pic.twitter.com/7u6knv5f6w— Faustin-Archange Touadéra (@FA_Touadera) June 27, 2022Related: Cryp­to users in Africa grew by 2,500% in 2021: ReportTouadéra’s and the CAR’s plans to adopt cryp­to seem to be emu­lat­ing those of El Sal­vador, whose Bit­coin Law declar­ing the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy legal ten­der went into effect in Sep­tem­ber 2021. The Latin Amer­i­can nation also announced plans to cre­ate its town Bit­coin City fund­ed by $1 bil­lion worth of BTC bonds, placed on hold as of June amid the bear market.

Dawn of a second Cold War and the ‘scramble for Africa’

Abstract Ample empir­i­cal evi­dence shows that the African Con­ti­nen­tal Free Trade Area (AfCF­TA) will boost the com­pet­i­tive­ness of African economies and accel­er­ate the diver­si­fi­ca­tion of sources of growth and trade to deep­en eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion in Africa and enhance the region’s assim­i­la­tion into the world econ­o­my. How­ev­er, real­iz­ing these poten­tials hinges on revers­ing the cur­rent trend…

New tools for easing cross-border trade in Africa

Mike Ogbalu, CEO of the Pan-African Pay­ment Set­tle­ment Sys­tem (PAPSS) at the African Export-Import Bank, dis­cuss­es PAPSS, a cross bor­der, finan­cial mar­ket infra­struc­ture enabling pay­ment trans­ac­tions across Africa. Relat­ed Con­tent Fore­sight Africa pod­cast is part of the Brook­ings Pod­cast Net­work. Sub­scribe and lis­ten on Apple, Spo­ti­fy, and wher­ev­er you lis­ten to pod­casts. Send feed­back email to podcasts@brookings.edu, and…

Denver Plans Direct Flights to a “Growing African Continent”

DENVER  — (AFRICA NEWS MATTERS)  Recent­ly we learned Den­ver Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (DIA) and the city of Den­ver, fond­ly called the mile-high city, in the US state of Col­orado, have begun explor­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for direct flights to con­ti­nen­tal Africa. DIA has set up a team that is work­ing on this ini­tia­tive called Den­ver Air Ser­vice Committee. …