How Crypto Can Help Redefine Business Across Africa | cryptopolitan

Cryptocurrency and blockchain have many use cases that can be used to help Africa experience faster economic growth. The use cases are nearly limitless between banking, wallets, loans, and the internet. Specifically, these use cases can help provide connectivity across the continent and enable banking access for millions of unbanked people.

3air, a blockchain-based connectivity company, strives to provide high-speed broadband connectivity and access to decentralized banking services in all African countries.

Through proven wireless technology, blockchain and cryptocurrency services, 3air aims to connect sub-Saharan Africa to the global economy. There are many problems against sub-Saharan Africa in terms of economy and connectivity. The region has an internet penetration rate of only 35%, which is significantly lower than the rest of the world.

The numbers are equally unfortunate for banking services. In 2022, 57% of Africans were unbanked; no checking accounts, no savings accounts, no banking in any form. Crypto can solve the banking problem in Sub-Saharan Africa by allowing unbanked people to use peer-to-peer transactions without the need for a centralized intermediary.

Digital-only banks are becoming more prevalent around the world, but are often centralized, which can pose challenges and limitations for customers when dealing with fiat currency. Banks often have lengthy identification processes and fees in place, require minimum deposits, and have issues with accessibility, security, and financial inclusion. With a large number of unbanked people in Sub-Saharan Africa, inaccessibility is a huge barrier to adoption.

Decentralization through cryptocurrencies avoids many of these issues, reduces fees, and prevents security issues from occurring in the first place. Due to the nature of crypto, the barrier to entry is low and less formalized, therefore more inclusive. There can be no exclusions when features are all online as long as internet access is widely available.

In Web3, banking accessibility can be solved with crypto by decentralizing access to financial and identity services. For instance, a company called 3air recently introduced NFT-based internet subscriptions. Users are connected to the Internet through high-speed broadband connections by purchasing an NFT which contains the rights to use telecommunications services.

Using NFTs as a subscription model offers significant advantages over standard telecom contracts. You own the NFT, and that NFT may be freely transferred between you and others.

Suppose you no longer want to use your subscription service. In this case, you can resell your token on a decentralized market or simply exchange it for another user. Once you have left your apartment, you can, for example, transfer the internet service of said apartment to new residents without spending hours on the phone with customer service. This method will save you from both canceling and rehiring internet services.

Blockchain technology can also be used for storing health information for personal use while being as secure, if not more so, than a centralized database. Storing information on a blockchain, locked behind an NFT for access, allows users to quickly extract all necessary medical information from anywhere they have an internet connection. NFTs are encrypted using hashes, which often provides more security than on a standard storage server.

On the hospital side, these NFTs allow interoperability and ease of use of data without worrying about its storage. Hospitals are often locked into contracts to use specific and varied software, which can be expensive, cumbersome and may not even work with each other, requiring more and more manual labor to enter information into a new system. .

Organizational transparency is another issue that is gaining increasing importance around the world. Enter DAOs, a blockchain-based codebase providing governance for businesses or nonprofits. DAOs are a set of strict rules that cannot be manipulated and prevent corruption, requiring those who use them to be completely transparent about how they manage their funds. Consider the case of nonprofits, where this enforced transparency provides an additional layer of trust, allowing organizations to operate without interference or corruption.

These are just a few of the many ways crypto can influence the global economy. However, they all benefit Africa exceptionally well by connecting users globally like never before: providing banking services to those without banks, decentralizing hospital records and health-related documents, and providing nonprofit organizations a way to better help those in need in a more reliable way.