Claim: Ghana’s Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, claims no African government has implemented blockchain technology.
Verdict: This is false. DUBAWA’s investigations have revealed that Kenya and Nigeria are at the forefront of developing blockchain technology in Africa. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only Kenya and Nigeria have national blockchain strategies among 12 African countries with a growing blockchain market.
Full Text
The 2024 Presidential candidate of Ghana’s governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has outlined some measures he would implement when elected president to combat corruption in the country.
Interacting with the clergy in the Upper East region as part of his campaign activities ahead of the Dec. 7, 2024, presidential election, the economist said he would implement blockchain technology in transactions across the country.
The Blockchain Council has defined blockchain as a “peer-to-peer decentralised distributed ledger technology that makes the records of any digital asset transparent and unchangeable and works without involving any third-party intermediary.”
“The last thing I am going to do is to bring in what we call blockchain technology…What is it? It is just a technology that makes sure all our transactions we are going to apply to the government, we are going to apply it to the land registry and all of that, and you cannot change the record; everybody will see the track of the transaction,” he said.
Dr Bawumia, the current Vice President of Ghana, said no government in Africa has implemented blockchain technology.
“It is immutable, it is not changeable, so there is transparency, and I want Ghana to be the first country in Africa to be powered by blockchain technology so that everybody’s actions will be transparent to everybody else and therefore, we will bring down corruption,” he added.
See the video of Dr Bawumia’s interaction with the clergy posted on Facebook, starting from minutes 1:09:05 to 1:10:03. Also, see here, here, and here, for media reports about the engagement.
Data available on Facebook has shown that as of May 20, 2024, the video has received over 1, 234 likes, 456 comments and 21,434 views.
DUBAWA decided to probe the claim as part of its campaign against misinformation and disinformation ahead of Ghana’s 2024 general election.
Verification
DUBAWA’s probe has revealed that Kenya and Nigeria are leading the development of blockchain technology in Africa.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only Kenya and Nigeria have national blockchain strategies among 12 African countries with a growing blockchain market.
“A review of government policy documents across the twelve jurisdictions reveals that just two countries within the group have national blockchain strategies: Kenya (Ministry of Information, 2019) and Nigeria (Nigerian Government, 2023),” the OECD said on page 9 of its November 2023 report titled “Blockchain adoption in Africa.
Explaining the rationale for a national blockchain policy, the Cabinet Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology, Joe Mucheru, noted on page 6 of the 2019 document, that:
“Corruption is perhaps the biggest obstacle to our nation-building endeavours, and technologies such as blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are emerging as effective tools to deal with the scourge.”
To further the country’s policy objectives, the Kenyan National Transport Safety Authority (NTSA) has incorporated blockchain technology to “revolutionise the transport industry.”
Also, before launching its national blockchain policy, Nigeria cooperated with Bitt Inc in 2022 for its digital currency, eNaira. The West African country has embraced blockchain technology in its education sector, “where government agencies have worked with the Cryptography Development Initiative of Nigeria (CDIN).”
The New York-based Bloomberg reported on June 10, 2022, about the Nigerian Exchange Limited’s plans to launch a blockchain-enabled exchange platform to expand trading and attract new investors.
With the implementation of its national blockchain policy, Nigeria plans to “create a blockchain-powered economy that supports secure transactions, data sharing, and value exchange between people, businesses, and government, thereby enhancing innovation, trust, growth, and prosperity for all.”
However, the OECD has noted that three African countries do not have a national blockchain policy but have blockchain goals within the wider national digital economy or industrial strategies, including Côte d’Ivoire (MENT, 2021), Mauritius (MTCI, 2018) and South Africa (Government of South Africa, 2020).
DUBAWA’s checks have revealed that although Ghana does not have a national blockchain policy, it has adopted blockchain technologies to “enhance their trading activities and increase operational systems’ interoperability.”
Ghana has implemented mobile money interoperability, which integrates all payment platforms across banks, fintechs, and telcos and allows for seamless money transactions across the country.
Also, the country’s Central bank is working with selected partners to issue a digital currency known as the eCedi.
Conclusion
Therefore, it is not true that no government in Africa has implemented blockchain technology. Available data has shown that Kenya and Nigeria are leading the continent in developing and implementing blockchain technology.
