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Cointelegraph launches in Senegal, West Africa. The medium-sized African country recently hosted the Bitcoin Conference (BTC), with more and more merchants and customers joining Lightning-his network.
Equipped with a camera, a Lightning wallet and a microphone, reporter Joe Hall took to the streets of Senegal to catch a glimpse of Bitcoin adoption in the capital, Dakar.
As Cointelegraph’s Youtube video highlights, Senegal has a young digital native population, and in recent years it has become commonplace for people to transfer money via mobile phones rather than banks.
For example, a mobile money provider called Wave launched in Senegal in 2017 and has since expanded to other countries in West Africa. It currently boasts millions of users.
Much like Bitcoin, the mobile money revolution seeks to bank the unbanked and improve the financial situation of the financially underserved. Its user experience is very similar to sending money through bitcoin’s lightning network in that you scan a QR code or send money to a number, but mobile his money is his 1-3 % charge and may take a few minutes to verify. So while it’s a useful tool, it’s too costly for microtransactions.
In the video, Hall sends Bitcoin to Wave’s manager over the Lightning Network. Wave managers expressed interest and surprise at the effectiveness of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. In fact, many Senegalese were interested in learning how to receive, acquire and store bitcoins.
The Dakar Bitcoin Days conference highlighted Senegalese interest in learning about and using Bitcoin. Founded by Nourou, Dakar Bitcoin Days is part of Bitcoin Sen, another pocket of his budding Bitcoin activity in West Africa.
But the most important reason that could lead to greater Bitcoin adoption in Senegal is to break the colonial financial chain.
Related: ‘We don’t like money’: The story of CFA and Bitcoin in Africa
In 1994, the value of the local currency, the CFA, was halved through the cooperation of France, the IMF, and the World Bank. Senegalese fiat savings have been thinned.
The scars and remnants of this financial collapse remain in West Africa and Senegal. CFA money is not sovereign, it disempowers and disenfranchises people.
As such, people are looking for alternatives and some are turning to Bitcoin.