The world’s leading digital currency bitcoin has become popular among Africans but thanks to the growth of the altcoin market, the continent now also has its own African cryptocurrencies.

In this guide, you will discover six African cryptocurrencies that are each trying to solve different challenges faced by the African population.

Kobocoin

“[Kobocoin] is a cryptocurrency and blockchain with an African heritage aimed at the African market with global ambitions,” Felix Onyemechi Ugoji, a United Kingdom-based Nigerian entrepreneur and developer, told Bitcoin Africa in an interview.

Kobocoin aims to play in Africa’s remittance market too to provide a fast and low-cost way for Africans in the diaspora to send money home. It also wants to be a cheap and reliable alternative to existing mobile money services in Africa.

Even though Kobocoin has had only very few adopters on the African continent since 2015, it received a significant shot in the arm in August 2018 when it announced on Bitcointalk, the largest online community for cryptocurrency users, that it will list on Golix, Zimbabwe’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. The listing will enable users to buy KOBO directly with crypto, Nigerian Naira, Kenya Shilling and South African Rand.

Digital Shilling

Launched in 2016, the Digital Shilling is a Kenya-based altcoin that is one of the first ventures to tackle cross-border payment issues using blockchain technology.

However, since it got started the project has not gained much traction and adoption is de facto non-existent. The founder and lead developer of Digital Shilling, Kelvin Yavwa, told BitcoinAfrica.io that the project had been bedevilled by “a massive disconnect with its point of contact – the African market.” He said the shilling is currently not at its full potential to provide a “simplified secure coin” for the African people. The challenge of market fit is not unexpected as every other cryptocurrency in the world right now, including bitcoin, is still a work-in-progress.

The cause for concern for Digital Shilling, though, should be its low trading volumes among investors. Since inception, its been only listed on four exchanges – BigBitex, OpenTrade, Nova, and Yobit, and at the time of writing, the 24-hour volume on these four exchanges was zero.

SureRemit

Nigerian blockchain-based non-cash remittance startup SureRemit could not have started on a better foot after raising a whopping $7 million during its token sale held from December 8, 2017, to February 8, 2018.

SureRemit, with its Remit (RMT) tokens, provides an opportunity for diaspora Africans to pay bills and buy shopping vouchers for their families and friends back home in Africa.

It has an increasingly growing network of merchants around Africa and international partners to enable Africans to send e-vouchers that are redeemable on the continent. The startup recently announced a partnership with a new voucher/gift card partner to help it gain access to the Turkish market. SureRemit says this partnership could bring in over 50 new merchants.

In its 2019 roadmap, it expressed ambitions to be listed on five cryptocurrency exchanges and open offices in Europe and North America.

Awehcash

Created in a country where regulators have been critical of cryptocurrencies, Awehcash is a cryptocurrency that wants to give Namibians an easy and secure access to the blockchain world.

Namibia’s Awehcash is built on the Waves Platform, a global public blockchain platform that provides a shared infrastructure for new blockchain-based projects. The company created only 21 million Awehcash tokens and had distributed “approximately 46,000 tokens” in October, Awehcash’s co-founder, Daniel, told BitcoinAfrica.

With the Bank of Namibia reinforcing its critical stance on cryptocurrencies in a public paper in May 2018 stating that “it does not recognise, support and recommend the possessing, utilisation and trading of cryptocurrencies in Namibia and by members of the public,” Awehcash already has an uphill task trying to convince Namibians to disregard warnings from the country’s central bank.

Mcoin

ONEm, a London-based technology company, launched the Mcoin for the African continent in September 2018. Its main selling point is that the digital currency can be transferred over text message and does, therefore, not require Internet. The company will offer both a digital wallet and an SMS wallet which works with a set of shortcodes and does not need a connection to the internet.

The company wants to reach the unconnected on the African continent and provide commercial and financial services to them through their mobile phone, with or without access to the Internet.

Even though this blockchain project sounds exciting and is attempting to solve a real problem, it remains to be seen how it will be able to forge partnerships with mobile operators in Africa and different regulators in each African country. And also, how it will convince the locals in many African communities to trust its platform.

Dala

Earlier in the year, Bitcoin Africa reported the launch of Wala’s zero-fee, borderless micropayments app in Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The Dala token is used by Wala, a mobile financial services platform built on the Ethereum blockchain, and is issued by the Dala Foundation.

The goal of the Wala team is to cater to the unbanked and underbanked in Africa. It is leveraging the Dala token to create a platform where people can send money to friends and families around Africa at fees lower than traditional banks and conduct other transactions such as buying airtime and paying bills at zero transaction fee.