After battling decades of socioeconomic problems, the African continent has found new hope in cryptocurrencies. It is the second-largest continent by size, yet more than 57% of the general population remains unbanked.
However, despite being relatively small economies, African countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, and South Africa currently rank among the top 20 countries in the Global Crypto Adoption Index.
Many projects across Africa are already leveraging blockchain technology, and cryptocurrencies to enable the general population to participate in the ongoing decentralized finance (DeFi) movement.
With the Central African Republic (CAR) recently legalizing Bitcoin as a legal tender, African countries are increasingly attracting crypto projects, venture capitalists, and angel investors alike.
Funding New Blockchain Innovation Center
As interest in African crypto adoption grows, Stratis, the Microsoft-focused blockchain platform, has entered into a long-term partnership with the Charitable Foundation of King Oyo to fund a new blockchain innovation center.
King Oyo (Rukirabasaija Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV) is the world’s youngest reigning monarch of the Tooro kingdom, located in southwest Uganda.
Known for his keen interest in technology, Oyo recently founded the King Oyo Science, Technology, Innovation and Industrialization Park in partnership with the Uganda Industrial Research Institute.
As part of this partnership between Stratis and the Charitable Foundation of King Oyo, Stratis will fund a new blockchain innovation center designed to build knowledge and blockchain development skills within the Tooro kingdom.
In addition, both partners will work together on new blockchain use cases that can improve the administrative efficiency of Tooro for the benefit of its people.
That said, one of the key areas that this partnership aims to focus on is agriculture. The Tooro kingdom has abundant rainfall, natural resources, and sunshine.
Therefore, Stratis envisions leveraging blockchain technology to introduce smart solutions to improve the kingdom’s output through IoT devices. These devices will interact with the Stratis Blockchain to create an immutable data warehouse, which can support a wide range of agricultural activities.
Bringing OpenFi to Unbanked, Underbanked
Underlining the interest in harnessing Africa’s crypto adoption, Gluwa, the borderless financial platform that integrates DeFi primitives with global investment opportunities, has added a new product to its existing product suite.
Dubbed “The Lottery Account,” this is Gluwa’s second investment-focused product that introduces a lottery-style no-loss stablecoin account. Users can deposit their sUSDC-G (L2 Gluwacoin) into collective liquidity pools and earn up to 4% APY.
Gluwa is an increasingly known name across the African continent, offering the unbanked population access to a wide range of financial services, including Gluwa Invest, Gluwa Exchange, Gluwa Capital, Gluwa Wallet, as well as DeFi services like Credal and Creditcoin.
The platform recently partnered with Aella, an online lending platform for unbanked and underbanked individuals in Africa and other emerging markets, to facilitate payments, remittances, investments, and other similar activities.
According to the official announcement, Gluwa’s Lottery Account follows the OpenFi (Open Finance) model — wherein interest is yielded through a combination of debt financing deals from the real world (off-chain) and low-risk money market funds.
To participate in the daily prize draw, users must deposit the required amount before the cut-off time. Since the draw happens every 24 hours, users stand a chance to win all of the interest accumulated in the prize pool daily. If there’s no winner, the prize will be rolled over to the next draw, further increasing the prize pool and the rewards.
The prize money is the interest accumulated from the deposits made by the users. As such, participants don’t risk anything when participating. Additionally, there is no fixed lock-up period, allowing users to withdraw their sUSDC-G deposits whenever needed.
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