Kenya, the home of m-pesa, is lauded as a tech savvy market that builds and adopts innovations quickly. More than 80% of the population has access to the internet; more than 60% of Kenyans own a bank account. However, the adoption of cryptocurrencies has been very slow. There have been reports of many tech startups exploring ways of exploiting bitcoin for remittances and payments. One of the pioneers of bitcoin in Kenya, BitPesa, were forced to change their business model to a platform that allows businesses to accept bitcoin payments. The localbitcoin platform (https://localbitcoins.com/) provides many Kenyans an avenue to trade their bitcoins, though this is very informal.
In my view, some of the reasons for slow adoption include:
While there is growth in knowledge and use of cryptocurrencies in Kenya, much more needs to be done to increase adoption. Mobile money is a normal thing in Kenya with m-pesa (so much so that m-pesa is now a verb), with many businesses accepting m-pesa payments. Some tech start-ups are building wallets that change bridge bitcoin and m-pesa payment, but they are forced to work with the large mobile network operators and banks to allow transfer of funds to bank accounts.
Kenya is ripe for an explosion of cryptocurrencies. Ethereum could take a significant space in this explosion with a large number of multinationals running projects that require funding. Smart contracts can play a large part here. There are many Kenyans in the diaspora sending remittances back home and with projects back in Kenya as well that can leverage on the smart contracts to ensure funds are only released on satisfactory completion of such projects.
