News & Analysis

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.