As Bitcoinist reported, the francophone Bitcoiners were in Bangui, the Central African Republic’s capital, “helping the attendees download bitcoin wallets and distributing sats to them; explaining the difference between bitcoin and the rest of crypto, answering that first set of questions everyone interacting with the technology for the first time has.” In the francophone Bitcoiners’ report, they elaborate, “the main objective of this trip was to understand the Central African Republic context better and identify the main factors that will encourage or inhibit the adoption of Bitcoin in the country.”
The main problems they identified were:
And the main advantage the francophone bitcoiners found was ”Mobile Money Usage,” to pay with one’s phone is extremely common in the Central African Republic. However, “a significant part of the population does not have a national identity card, which is mandatory to buy a SIM card.” That’s a solvable problem, be it by the easy path of relaxing regulations or by the hard road of legally identifying all citizens.
In general, the main recommendation is to follow in El Salvador’s footsteps. Most of the suggestions for bitcoin adoption come from their playbook.
“The Central African Republic has abundant sources of energy. According to our sources, the hydroelectric potential could create an installed capacity of 700 to 2’000 MW. The aim is to use mining as a subsidy to tap into this underexploited clean energy potential.”
“A considerable portion of the Central African population does not yet understand what bitcoin is and its merits as the country’s legal tender. The success of the legalisation of bitcoin cannot be achieved without the involvement of government, civil society and academia.”
