Zimbabwe, the landlocked country in southern Africa, has a new finance minister: Mthuli Ncube, African Development Bank’s former chief economist, and vice president.

Ncube is on a mission to revive Zimbabwe’s struggling economy as it continues to cope with years of economic turmoil, dwindling foreign currency reserves and cash difficulties. These cash difficulties have worsened since banks imposed a cap on withdrawals. Zimbabwe residents now prefer to hold on to their money rather than entrusting it in a financial institution. This outcome? A “dollarized” economy.

“It's enormous, it is Herculean. I am very energetic and I am very up to the task. I am starting now, but in the process what I will do is listen,” he said of the undertaking. One of his first orders of business? Advising the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) to follow Switzerland’s lead and embrace Bitcoin at a state level.

“Zimbabwe should be investing in understanding innovations and often central banks are too slow in investing in these technologies,” he says, “but there are other countries which are moving faster. If you look at the Swiss central bank they are investing in and understanding Bitcoin.”

Accepting cryptocurrency will be a major change for RBZ as they’ve previously opposed it, even banning domestic banking institutions from working with cryptocurrency businesses back in May.

Ncube is urging officials to be more progressive and keep the country open to the future of digital currency and its potential benefits. “One can pay for travel using bitcoin in Switzerland. So, if these countries can see value in this and where it’s headed, we should also pay attention,” Ncube said. “We have innovative youngsters so the idea shouldn’t be to stop it and say don’t do this, but rather the regulators should invest in catching up with them and find ways to understand it, then you regulate it because you now understand it.”

Ncube is tasking the RBZ to establish a cryptocurrency division responsible for assisting the country’s central bank to move Zimbabwe forward in the digital assets field.

Action is already being taken on RBZ’s part. They are currently studying ways of applying blockchain technology to their internal processes.