BitHub.Africa conducted a feasibility study on how Blockchain technology like
BTC could be harnessed to create new opportunities to solve problems in Africa. This was especially important given the recent decision by Kenyan Central Bank to issue a warning against
BTC.
We surveyed 96 people who are already in the African uᴉoɔʇᴉq Community using this form. What follows is a summary of the Blockchain Opportunity feasibility study we launched in December 2015.
As shown in figure 1 above 92% of our respondents were from Kenya with some significant respondents from Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Uganda and Tanzania.
As shown in figure 2 above about 89.5% of the respondents were male with 10.5% being female showing the huge Gender divide in the industry today.
Figure 3 above shows that the majority of the respondents i.e. 67.7% and 58.3% of the respondents are interested in Startups and Digital currencies respectively. This seems to suggest that Startups could be looking into monetizing their ideas or businesses using Digital Currencies.
52% of the respondents are interested in technology innovations perhaps because Kenya is fast evolving into a technology hub within Africa and is now known as the Silicon Savannah leading to innovators finding a home in the country.
38.5% and 37.5% of the respondents are interested in both FinTech services and our Blockchain Accelerator. FinTech services have been growing rapidly in Kenya as the sector has had substantial success in the space being the home of M-Pesa a mobile money payment service used by majority of Kenyans for local money transfer and bill payment. Recently micro lending services have also grown substantially with mobile applications such as M-Shwari, Mkopo Rahisi and Branch finding significant usage with borrowers interested in getting instant loans for their personal and business needs.
Banking Services and Mining also had 33% and 30% of the respondents interested which is telling that their is substantial awareness of key aspects on Blockchain technology as pertaining storage of value as well as rewarding miners who keep these distributed networks running. Indeed there are a few miners in the community in Kenya.
Notary services and Cultural rights have the least amount of interest at 7% and 10% respectively which goes to show that its still not clear from an African perspective how Blockchain technology can be utilized in this area.
Here are some of the comments on
BTC by the respondents.
- Disruptive technology
- This is Revolutionary!
- It’s the future of digital currencies.
- Internet back in 95′
- Simply awesome!
- The future of online trade.
- It is the next big thing
- Fantastic
In conclusion the respondents from this survey are clearly leaning towards Blockchain technology providing opportunity in disrupting businesses mostly in the financial sector and offering new growth for startups across the region. While the respondents sample is small we can conclude that adoption of this technology is quite feasible certainly in the main country polled which is Kenya.
Our Blockchain Opportunity study continues as we dig deeper into some of the technological innovations available and how they can be solutions to challenges within the African context. Subscribe to our Newsletter below to keep up to date.
Subscribe here for more updates on Blockchain Opportunities http://bithub.co.ke/subscribe/SOURCE: http://bithub.co.ke/2016/03/24/results-blockchain-opportunity-feasibility-study-2016/
