Africa ready to use blockchain to leapfrog other regions: NITDA’s Kashifu Inuwa on CoinGeek Backstage

While the Western world developed landline infrastructure for communications, Africa lagged. But then came the mobile phone, and since it hadn’t invested billions on the landline, Africa was able to adopt mobile phones at a faster rate than the West. Kashifu Inuwa believes that with blockchain technology, Africa is about to leapfrog the West again.

Inuwa is the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the Nigerian government agency that invests in emerging technology.

Inuwa has been one of the Nigerian government’s key leaders pioneering blockchain adoption in the country.

Speaking to CoinGeek’s Becky Liggero, he revealed that what he looks for in a blockchain network is “scalability and trust. With a public blockchain like BSV, it builds confidence and makes the drawbacks less disturbing so that the government can easily work with the founders to co-create regulations and build use cases that can make life better.”

NITDA runs the NITDA Academy, which seeks to educate and upskill developers in Nigeria. It has now partnered with Domineum Blockchain Solutions and the BSV Blockchain Academy to “train our people on how to use technology. We have an ambitious target to have 95% digital literacy by 2030.”

NITDA has continued to partner with the BSV community, being a key part of events such as the Blockchain Developers Summit in July and the Blockchain Day at the Digital Nigeria International Conference in October.

Inuwa believes that the time for Africa to leapfrog its peers has come, and blockchain is the key.

“We have the talent, we have the resources, and we’re ready to leapfrog. We have the legacy infrastructure, therefore we can easily use blockchain to leapfrog in many sectors, especially in the financial sector. We need to increase our financial inclusion. Blockchain can easily help us achieve this, as well as strengthen our democracy and make governance more efficient and transparent.”

Watch: The BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Blockchain in Africa