Over the past few years, the term blockchain has become one of the regularly used words in the fintech space. This is a reflection of the emergence of blockchain-driven solutions that companies and initiatives are adopting in different parts of the African continent.
Blockchain technology is defined as an open and distributed ledger system that can document transactions between two parties. These transactions are efficiently and verifiably recorded permanently and shared by several participants in the blockchain system without full control of a single entity.
Africa is increasingly advancing socio-economic growth through the adoption of culture technology for e-commerce and entrepreneurship frameworks because such technologies are often multiple advantages towards the way of easing business transactions across the continent.
Blockchain technology can support African financial digitalization and this digital revolution can rescue numerous African economies, however, some African governments are still hesitant about fully adopting blockchain technology.
In my recent chat with Idowu Akinde the Africa Chapter Lead of Hyperledger on the Tech Trends show, he discusses how we can maximize the potential of this technology.
CFA: Idowu, glad to have you on Tech Trends today.
Idowu: Thank you so much, CFA. it’s always a pleasure
CFA: There’s this confusion or sort of misunderstanding where people refer to crypto as blockchain and blockchain as crypto. Tell us what is the difference.
Idowu: That’s the million-dollar question. I get that question very often from family, friends former colleagues and even present colleagues. Many times, people use the words interchangeably. It just so happens that cryptocurrency was the first implementation or use case of blockchain.
Cryptocurrency, technically speaking, is not equal to block chain and blockchain, technically speaking, is not equal to cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is one way of applying the blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is the foundation behind cryptocurrency and many other things.
One easy to understand illustration is to think about mobile phones. Whether you are the Android type or the iOS type, our smartphones have an operating system and then we have up that we download from the stores on to the Operating System.
Think of blockchain as a operating system whether it’s iOS or Google Play or Android and then cryptocurrency as the first app that you download onto your OS. You can have a hundred other apps that are built on blockchain that are not related to cryptocurrency.
CFA: All right. Nigeria, just like many countries in Africa, is facing a number of challenges. So, give us examples of use cases of how blockchain can make a difference.
Idowu: Blockchain controls three advantages in any type of situation you introduce to it. One, it increases trust. Two, it gives you increased transparency.
You can watch the full interview here.
