Farida Nabourema on Why Bitcoin Adoption in Africa Is Outpacing the World

Farida Nabourema joined Simply Bitcoin Live to talk about why Bitcoin adoption on the African continent is happening faster than almost anywhere else in the world, and why it has almost nothing to do with ideology.

WHO SHE IS

Nabourema is a Togolese human rights activist and the founder of the Africa Bitcoin Community Hub and the Africa Bitcoin Conference. She has spent years fighting against Togo's ruling government, which has held power for decades, and has used Bitcoin in her activism for roughly eight years as a way to move money without the government tracing or freezing it.

NECESSITY, NOT IDEOLOGY

Nabourema said close to 150 million people across Africa now have some exposure to Bitcoin, roughly 10% of the continent's population, and that Africa has been ranked the fastest-growing Bitcoin adoption region for three straight years. She tied that growth to the continent's demographics, noting the population is overwhelmingly young.

She was blunt about why adoption looks different than in the West. In Africa, more than 70% of the population is unbanked, and in rural areas, which make up roughly 60% of the population, more than 95% lack access to a bank account at all. A mobile phone and a Bitcoin wallet close that gap instantly, without a bank branch ever entering the picture.

THE COST OF SENDING MONEY HOME

The remittance math she laid out is stark. Sending money between two neighboring African countries often has to route through an intermediary bank in Europe before arriving, a process that costs both time and money. She put remittance fees on the continent as high as 16%, compared to roughly 2% in Europe, with more than $17 billion lost to those fees across Africa every year.

THE CFA FRANC: A CURRENCY STILL CONTROLLED FROM PARIS

The most striking part of the conversation was Nabourema's breakdown of the CFA franc, the currency used by 15 African nations that is not controlled by those nations at all. She explained that the currency was built by the French government after World War II, requiring member countries to deposit a majority of their reserves with the Bank of France, which still holds significant control over the currency's monetary and fiscal policy today. She said the currency has lost the majority of its value since its creation, and that leaders who challenged it historically did not survive politically. Togo's first president was assassinated shortly after moving to pull the country out of the system in the 1960s. Fifteen countries still use the currency today, and it can only be converted to euros, making it effectively worthless outside those nations' borders.

BITCOIN AS THE ONLY WAY OUT

Nabourema's framing is direct: many of these nations are independent on paper but still operate as financial colonies. Bitcoin, she said, is the one form of money that doesn't discriminate based on geography, with a satoshi in Togo carrying the same value as one in the United States or France. That equality, not any philosophical attachment to decentralization, is what's driving adoption on a continent where the traditional alternative was never functional to begin with.

She pointed to Satoshi wallet and Lightning as the dominant tools people are actually using for payments, not just savings, and closed by asking supporters to pressure their own governments to demand the release of political prisoners in Togo and press for basic freedoms of speech and assembly.

This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.