Africa - Hidden Treasure for the world and bitcoin

[joinfree]

Most African countries have very good natural resources but their main problem is the high rate of bribery and corruption. Government officials embezzles with huge sums of state's  money yet nobody is really brought to book by the law. Substituting bitcoin for fiat currency can help curb all those escalating rates of theft from the nation's coffers. The reality of the problem is that, both the governments and warlords are all corrupt looking for their own selfish gains. What most African countries really need are working institutions void of governmental control which can make sure that everything is accounted for.

[sazonk]

Yes Africa is a country that is viewed by other countries, but as much as Africa has the potential, both natural resources, human resources, and tourism and many more. It is unfortunate that this attention to Africa is arguably lacking, education, health, food, clothing, technology etc.
I see if Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency started to be used in my Africa it is a very good thing considering that the currency of Africa has a low value compared to other countries ' currencies. How is it?
For example for the tourism in Africa, the government or local managers can start using Altcoin (BTC, ETH etc.) as a pay ticket tool, and it can be done not only tourism, can apply to buy and sell natural resources such as iron, tin, gold, coal, and petroleum. Of course all these things are not easy to implement Cryptocurrency as an official tool for buying and selling in Africa, and desperately needing government support. Unimaginable when Crypto has been adopted as a substitute for classic money, Africa can become a high tech barren Planet.

[NathanJB]

Yes Africa is a country that is viewed by other countries, but as much as Africa has the potential, both natural resources, human resources, and tourism and many more. It is unfortunate that this attention to Africa is arguably lacking, education, health, food, clothing, technology etc.
I see if Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency started to be used in my Africa it is a very good thing considering that the currency of Africa has a low value compared to other countries ' currencies. How is it?
For example for the tourism in Africa, the government or local managers can start using Altcoin (BTC, ETH etc.) as a pay ticket tool, and it can be done not only tourism, can apply to buy and sell natural resources such as iron, tin, gold, coal, and petroleum. Of course all these things are not easy to implement Cryptocurrency as an official tool for buying and selling in Africa, and desperately needing government support. Unimaginable when Crypto has been adopted as a substitute for classic money, Africa can become a high tech barren Planet.

However, the government support that the development of the vast natural resources of the continent badly needs is nowhere to be found. The continent is made even poorer because of the governments themselves which, instead of being responsible to look after the welfare of their own people, are the ones who are stealing the little money generated. The same governments are selling the iron, tin, gold, coal, and petroleum to foreign entities. Cryptocurrency cannot address all these difficult problems.

[Memminger]

I don’t think so. The problem being that is the people itself. Even if Bitcoin is introduced with a good intention but if put in the wrong hands then it can be used to embezzle money from the people and use Bitcoin to escape using the anonymity that it offers.

I think the change should start with the people first before they can be ready for the new technologies by educating themselves.

[audaciousbeing]

I think you'd either have to really poorly informed and ignorant these days to assume anything about any country or region in the world anymore. You, for example, still talk about Africa as a nation when the concept is much larger than that. Continent? Region? The last person who talked about a single African nation in my memory, was Muammar Gaddafi;)

I agree, they got a lot of problems to fix. To be fair, a lot of those problems inherited or built in because of their colonial past, but also because of so many underlying needs -- basic health, basic education... etc.

Bitcoin is far, far from the solution they need. Not today anyway.

The problem of Africa is so complex that it needs to be approached from different sides at the same time and you could not have said it any better. If a solution is deployed which in this case bitcoin, it will only scratch the surface and not even move close to solution which is more fundamental. For a start, the larger population still live in poverty, there is high illiteracy facing the continent, there is dearth of infrastructure in addition to low penetration of civilization in some part of the continent. The worst of all is how the continent has been so unfortunate with bad leaders who are only about their pockets and the absence of structures and institutions to ensure the right things are done. Bitcoin is really far from solving its problem.

[sazonk]

Yes Africa is a country that is viewed by other countries, but as much as Africa has the potential, both natural resources, human resources, and tourism and many more. It is unfortunate that this attention to Africa is arguably lacking, education, health, food, clothing, technology etc.
I see if Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency started to be used in my Africa it is a very good thing considering that the currency of Africa has a low value compared to other countries ' currencies. How is it?
For example for the tourism in Africa, the government or local managers can start using Altcoin (BTC, ETH etc.) as a pay ticket tool, and it can be done not only tourism, can apply to buy and sell natural resources such as iron, tin, gold, coal, and petroleum. Of course all these things are not easy to implement Cryptocurrency as an official tool for buying and selling in Africa, and desperately needing government support. Unimaginable when Crypto has been adopted as a substitute for classic money, Africa can become a high tech barren Planet.

However, the government support that the development of the vast natural resources of the continent badly needs is nowhere to be found. The continent is made even poorer because of the governments themselves which, instead of being responsible to look after the welfare of their own people, are the ones who are stealing the little money generated. The same governments are selling the iron, tin, gold, coal, and petroleum to foreign entities. Cryptocurrency cannot address all these difficult problems.

It is true that for problems, especially in Africa, there are indeed many, especially internal problems in the country itself, many governments are indeed carrying out corrupt practices, which are victims of society, crops are sold by the government itself for the benefit of a handful of parties. The government provides workers with low wages, of course it is very worrying so that the economy and technological progress there is relatively slow. And indeed Cryptocurrency is not a way out of the problems that exist in Africa, maybe my optimistic hopes if Africa has been able to evaluate the decline of their countries, the brand can take steps to use Crypto as an official medium of exchange. But it is unimaginable what if that is true Africa is a large Crypto consuming country, how can the people there slip away money easily, that's the negative side of Crypto 

[ChrisPop]

I am not aware of the exact situation from Africa, but I do know that Africa is full of riches including natural resources, fertile, unutilised lands and work force, but still most of them live like they are one century behind. Africa represents a big percent of the global surface, therefore big investments need to be done there. The potential isbhuge and Bitcoin can play an important rule in this. No need for banks anymore so the unbanked will be able to benefit from the economy and actually "save" or invest their work.

[wozzek23]

Africa is basically a great place, and truly they have lots of resources, but their problem is that they have foolish leaders. So, I won't blame them for facing poverty, because their leaders are the ones killing them, such great nations. If only they can come together and take down those evil leaders they have then they will see their economy booming.

Their leaders are so corrupt, all they are interested in when they are voted is just to be stealing from the country's purse and making themselves and their family rich. They don't build good schools for their people, but they send their children over to EU and US to study in great schools such as Harvard and Yale at the expense of their country, lol .

Since, they value education that much, why don't they build such schools as Harvard in their own countries ? It's so shameful. These people have resources such as crude oil, but they don't build factories to refine them, rather they sell to other countries and buy back at a higher price. To me that's stupidity and the leaders are to be blamed. In this world our leaders are the ones killing us in most cases but we do nothing, sad truth.

Government are the major problem of the country, they are the ones that are so foolish and lack the control of their citizens and if you look at country like Nigeria that is blessed with highly intelligent people with the few off them that I have met, and if you study Nigerians very well, you will see that they are the ones actually doing very well more when they reach overseas to study, but their own government would not create enabling environment for them to study well.

The only ones that are trying are some of these private owned school, like on covenant school that I know, I think that they are of high standard like Harvard, just that they are quite expensive too which I even heard that their citizens could not afford it, I mean that average people, which is even owned by a church thee.

[Mometaskers]

When we hear about Africa most of us assume about the poverty or unemployment but honestly the kind of natural minerals they reserve they could be one of the richest nation but the problem over there is that neither government nor the citizens get benefited by their natural reserves due to warlords occupying it but do you think if government takes stern step and utilize the resource in the appropriate way and accepts bitcoin as a payment mode for exports then Africa can bloom again and this will help bitcoin if those products can be purchased using bitcoin so it will increase the trade which will benefit them in their GDP and will increase the demand for bitcoin thus triggering the price pump.

I'd say the government is pocketing enough to be part of the problem. No amount of money thrown into it and no amount of "efficiency" will solve the situation there if the institutions don't change.

Sure the governments can sell their goods for bitcoins (good luck with that) and then maybe hold on to some to get more money but do you really think that will trickle down to the population? Those resources are exactly the reason these countries are in this state - the government don't need the population to earn money. They can just hire a few people and extract the resources.

[karanggatak]

When we hear about Africa most of us assume about the poverty or unemployment but honestly the kind of natural minerals they reserve they could be one of the richest nation but the problem over there is that neither government nor the citizens get benefited by their natural reserves due to warlords occupying it but do you think if government takes stern step and utilize the resource in the appropriate way and accepts bitcoin as a payment mode for exports then Africa can bloom again and this will help bitcoin if those products can be purchased using bitcoin so it will increase the trade which will benefit them in their GDP and will increase the demand for bitcoin thus triggering the price pump.

in my opinion is not that simple because the problems experienced by African countries are very complicated. I think using Bitcoin will not be able to solve problems in Africa. in my opinion the first thing an African country government must do to escape poverty, unemployment and other problems is to improve education. when the human resources are well formed. then they can manage their natural resources to the full.

[Google+]

I don’t think so. The problem being that is the people itself. Even if Bitcoin is introduced with a good intention but if put in the wrong hands then it can be used to embezzle money from the people and use Bitcoin to escape using the anonymity that it offers.

I think the change should start with the people first before they can be ready for the new technologies by educating themselves.

I think Africa is only used as a place to adopt cryptocurrency and has a lot of coins developed, even though there are only a few places in Africa that can do projects like that and indeed there are some African regions that do not understand what cryptocurrency is but there are places that can be used to study and developing cryptocurrency technology.

[HarmonyA]

When we hear about Africa most of us assume about the poverty or unemployment but honestly the kind of natural minerals they reserve they could be one of the richest nation but the problem over there is that neither government nor the citizens get benefited by their natural reserves due to warlords occupying it but do you think if government takes stern step and utilize the resource in the appropriate way and accepts bitcoin as a payment mode for exports then Africa can bloom again and this will help bitcoin if those products can be purchased using bitcoin so it will increase the trade which will benefit them in their GDP and will increase the demand for bitcoin thus triggering the price pump.

Yes, Africa is underestimated by those who don't know the potential,  but it is the best place for good ROI if you do the needful. But the issue with Africa using bitcoin as a means of payment is underpinned by the literacy level of the populace. Digital Currency usage requires a good literacy in the basic of computer operations, and this is not acquired by majority of Africans especially those in the rural areas and uneducated groups.Less bitcoin will boost the economy, though Africa is already among the top continent which uses cryptocurrency.