With pundits like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey predicting that Africa "will ascertain" the future of Bitcoin (BTC), cryptocurrency and blockchain technology continue to attract involvement from both public and private establishments beyond the continent. Many of these adoption cases take been moving beyond finance, developing solutions targeted at issues like unemployment, identity direction, health care and supply chain, amid others.

Amid the growing enthusiasm for crypto and blockchain technology in Africa, manufacture stakeholders interviewed by Cointelegraph identify a lack of education every bit i of the major hurdles continuing in the manner of more broad-based utilization of the technology. The absence of clear-cut regulations and minimal support from various governments accept also had a negative affect on the rollout of pilot projects that could provide solutions to some of the problems plaguing the continent.

Southern Africa — a blockchain frontier

Co-ordinate to data from the World Economic Forum, Africa has the world's youngest population. Of the top 20 nations with the lowest median age, the merely non-African nation is Afghanistan, with Niger having a median age of a little higher up 15 years — most one-half of the global average.

Such a loftier concentration of a immature demographic presents opportunities for an increase in the adoption of emerging technologies as seen in the mobile market boom across the continent. Indeed, Africa is reportedly the fastest-growing mobile market in the globe.

Blockchain technology has the potential to follow the trajectory already set by mobile telephones in Africa. Apart from digital currency systems being used for cantankerous-border remittance, several projects in Africa accept been exploring blockchain-based solutions to problems that have eluded solutions for decades.

All of the manufacture stakeholders interviewed in this commodity by Cointelegraph nearly the land of blockchain utilization in Southern Africa concur that at that place is an ongoing narrative shift. While the initial focus of many projects was on payments and crypto trading, several startups take started examining non-financial use cases for decentralized ledger engineering-based systems.

Commenting on the pin toward other DLT utilise cases, Chris Cleverly, the CEO of Kamari, a blockchain payment and gaming platform, revealed that it was a new development that only began taking shape in the terminal 12 months. In an e-mail to Cointelegraph, Cleverly remarked:

"In South Africa, the majority of blockchain growth until a year ago was all focused on trading and cyberbanking and generally the financial side of the sector. Lately though, at that place accept been a broad variety of use cases emerging that are focused on media engineering science."

Energy-positive neighborhoods in rural Africa

Cleverly also revealed that blockchain technology is being applied in the development of Africa's renewable free energy ecosystem, adding: "The Sun Exchange is some other fascinating nontraditional financial use case for renewable free energy." According to Cleverly, "They created the earth's get-go peer-to-peer leasing platform that enabled anyone in the world to invest anywhere to create solar free energy arrays, all maintained and enabled past blockchain applied science."

Launched in 2022 in South Africa, The Sun Exchange enables the monetization of sunshine — one of the continent's nigh abundant resource — with an estimated two,000 kilowatt-hour per square meter reaching the surface on an annual ground. Via DLT, The Sunday Exchange is able to create a platform for P2P solar prison cell micro-leasing for schools and businesses in Africa.

At the intersection of blockchain technology and renewable solar energy, several startups accept identified a viable aqueduct to low-cal upwardly Africa, with a special focus on rural areas historically poorly served by their respective national grids. Data from the U.N. shows Africa'southward electricity generation is the lowest in the world for a population of over 1.3 billion people.

Many of these projects use similar business models that allow customers with solar panels to sell excess energy to residents. Projects like OneWattSolar even use tokenized avails to make payments, thus bringing digital currency adoption fifty-fifty closer to the masses.

The consumer-driven energy sector is taking off not only in Southern Africa but across the remainder of sub-Saharan Africa with the aim of addressing the needs of approximately 58% of the population — which has piddling or no access to electricity. Amid the blockchain-based solar power revolution in Africa comes the potential for a meaning transition toward cleaner energy sources, peculiarly at a time when environmental scientists have been clamoring for a reduction in fossil-fuel dependence.

Revamping Africa's ID infrastructure

Role of this expanding utilization of blockchain technology appears to be coming from an improved perception of the engineering science by governments and private establishments in Africa. Grey Jabesi, the director of business organization development at the United Africa Blockchain Clan, a Pan-African blockchain organization told Cointelegraph:

"Leaders and decision-makers from both government and private institutions used to negatively associate blockchain with cryptocurrency, which made them hesitant to explore the technology or work with blockchain startups. This decelerated the adoption of the technology but now, virtually of them have realized the potential of blockchain and are exploring ways to implement it into their business organisation if necessary. Blockchain startups are besides starting to get institutional recognition and funding."

According to Jabesi, blockchain adoption in identity management is one of the leading real-world use cases for the technology in Southern Africa. Figures from the World Bank evidence that more than i billion people across the earth practise not have any official identification.

Related: Blockchain Digital ID — Putting People in Control of Their Data

This identity management crisis is one of the reasons why a pregnant percentage of the global population remains unbanked. However, problems with robust identity systems are not restricted to Africa alone: case in point, the "Windrush scandal" of 2022 in the Great britain.

Figures from both the World Banking company and UNICEF put birth registration — the about fundamental form of official national identity — in Africa at fifty%. Co-ordinate to UNICEF, the situation is particularly worse in Eastern and Southern Africa where the birth registration of children under five years of age has dropped to forty%.

In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Nini Moru, the executive coordinator at the Africa Blockchain University of Southern Africa, revealed that startups are already leveraging DLT solutions to improve identity management in the region:

"FlexFinTx is working on cocky-sovereign identities for Africans who don't have forms of identification and thus are restricted from accessing services such as health intendance, insurance and banking. Information technology's using Algorand's blockchain to make sure that the identities are tamper-proof and self-sovereign."

Dorsum in February 2022, FlexFinTx became the outset African visitor to bring together the Decentralized Identity Foundation — a coalition of establishments looking to leverage DLT for Self Sovereign Identity. The company has partnered with tech giants similar IBM and Microsoft in the deployment of its FlexID through WhatsApp, a arrangement that is already helping Zimbabweans get easier access to banking and health care services.

Speaking at the Blockchain Africa conference before this year, Victor Mapunga, the CEO and co-founder of FlexFinTx, highlighted the demand for novel identity direction systems non to neglect the protection for sensitive user data. During his address at the briefing, Mapunga revealed that FlexID users have total command over how their information is shared.

Improving health care awareness and fighting counterfeit drugs

Blockchain adoption has also been growing in the continent'due south health sector. A combination of factors such as lack of political will, corruption, poor allocation of resources and maintenance culture, besides as an insufficient number of medical professionals has seen wellness intendance remain a challenge for the vast majority of people living in Africa.

While the problems are well-known, creating lasting solutions has remained unattainable for several stakeholders looking to better the state of affairs. Nevertheless, via blockchain technology, health intendance companies in Africa have been working toward providing help to those hardest hit past years of regime neglect. Commenting on some of the significant blockchain-based advances in African health intendance service delivery, Cleverly remarked that his company seeks to develop a digital medical data marketplace, calculation:

"Kamari has also been involved in programs to promote and encourage HIV testing across Africa through crypto incentives. The real promise here is through community engagement through blockchain tech."

With lower HIV, malaria and fewer respiratory tract infections, like tuberculosis, among the leading causes of death in Africa, some companies have been leveraging blockchain engineering science to decentralize the flow of information and care for the continent's nearly vulnerable demographic. Platforms like KinectHub have created a tokenized ecosystem to reward participants working to improve the continent'due south health care sector. These projects as well create electronic health records that accurately capture the medical histories of patients — a privilege hitherto only available to wealthy Africans. Blockchain applied science provides a robust security infrastructure that ensures sensitive data won't be compromised.

Access to potentially life-saving medication is also another pregnant health care challenge in Africa. According to the U.N., people in Africa generally consume imported drugs, with simply 2% of the supply produced on the continent. This statistic becomes fifty-fifty more alarming when considered against the backdrop of Republic of india and China — places with similar population densities, only importing 5% and 20% of consumed drugs, respectively.

Exacerbating this already hard state of affairs is the proliferation of counterfeit medicines. Co-ordinate to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, upwards to 158,000 malaria deaths per year in Africa are caused by fake anti-malaria medication. With blockchain technology showing some promise in the expanse of traceability, projects have been applying the technology direct in the African pharma supply chain. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Uganda's government partnered with blockchain pharmaceutical startup MediConnect back in July 2022 to trace fake drugs in the country.

Education is still a major pain point

While these projects have tackled various problems, there appears to exist a shifting tide in the arroyo to solving the developmental problems plaguing the continent. With Africans leading the charge, the solutions created by these startups have a much higher probability of being tailored to specific African peculiarities. Cleverly touched on this bailiwick, using developments in the supply chain loonshit as an example:

"Some other fascinating blockchain visitor is fuzoDNA, a blockchain platform for supply chain management. The potential commercial and psychological value for Africa to upgrade its supply chain management from its current colonial-era system is difficult to understate. Transforming this sector for Africans/by Africans would transform Africa and place information technology at the center of its own economy."

Equally previously reported past Cointelegraph, one of the primal takeaways from the 2022 edition of the Blockchain Africa briefing was the importance of education every bit an important adoption driver for the technology on the content. Commenting on the major issues for more broad-based DLT adoption in Africa, Moru remarked:

"I call up major hurting points in Southern Africa range from the regulatory mural, lack of understanding and price of implementation. In regards to regulatory mural, I believe it goes manus in manus with lack of understanding. Lack of understanding of the engineering science leads to regulators non being able to come up with relevant laws and regulations to support blockchain projects."

Apart from these bug, African blockchain developers besides navigate challenges like scalability and limited interoperability with legacy systems. Industry stakeholders will be hoping that these problems are not sufficient to dampen the enthusiasm of projects looking to use the emerging engineering science in finding lasting solutions to the continent's major problems.

Related: Africa Using Blockchain to Bulldoze Change, Part One: Nigeria and Republic of kenya