This is an opinion editorial by Heritage Falodun, a Nigeria-based bitcoin analyst and computer scientist.
Expanding Bitcoin Adoption on the African Continent Will Not Just Happen Through Bitcoin legal tender statementbut also thanks to easy and inexpensive access.
People’s opinions are colored by different perspectives, but mine is to paint the big picture of what Africans need: Africans want and will adopt any solution that can solve their problems in real time. Making payment rails less complex and being as low-tech as possible is in fact one of the prerequisites for enabling financial inclusion and lowering barriers to entry for users in Africa.
Machankura, for example, is a bitcoin-focused payment solution integrating Africa’s existing telecommunications infrastructure with the bitcoin second-layer protocol known as Lightning Network with the aim of enabling financial inclusion and getting an instant payment service in the nooks and crannies of Africa in a depository manner. On the other hand, BitText is an open-source Bitcoin project in the pipeline aimed at achieving the Machankura non-custodial solution.
Let’s dig deeper into what this entails and understand why these solutions might work exceptionally well for Africans.
A feature phone is a class of mobile phones that retains the shape of previous generations of mobile phones, usually with push-button-based inputs and small non-touch screens. So, smart phones are portable computing devices that combine mobile phone functionality and computer functions into a single unit, which are distinguished from feature phones by their more powerful hardware capabilities and expanded mobile operating systems, which facilitate broader software functionality.
Typical feature phone. Image source: Science Museum.
Unlike many other parts of the world where smartphones make up almost the entire market, in Africa, feature phones represent a significant share of the mobile phone market. Unsurprisingly, “of the 40-50 million mobile phones shipped to Africa per quarter, more than half are feature phones,” according to Statista. In fact, in the first quarter of 2022, smartphone shipments amounted to 19.7 million units, while nearly 22 million feature phones were shipped. The reasons behind this aren’t far-fetched: smartphones are more expensive than feature phones, and a high percentage of the African population probably uses feature phones because they’re more affordable, even though they lack the juicy features of smartphones. .
Image sources: Statista.com
Since a large portion of the African population uses these devices, fostering financial inclusion for this set of users in a decentralized way requires creating consumable products on feature phones. African Bitcoin developers have realized that additional unstructured service data (USSD) works interoperably on feature phones and smartphones and has taken the initiative to develop Machankura and BitText via this communication protocol.
Users can think of Machankura as similar to Satoshi’s Wallet, but in its skeletal form, without a bulky user interface. Instead of having a smartphone app, you interact with the wallet through the USSD menu. Machankura handles requests through its custom Application Package Interface (API) framework with the Lightning Network. Users broadcast requests via mobile networks and not an internet connection, the request is then accepted and relayed via the internet and the Lightning Network via the Machankura database and existing Bitcoin and Lightning nodes.
At the time of this writing, Machankura appears to be working well and its website says it covers at least six African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda – with USSD codes and step-by-step instructions. stage. for use included also.
Dialing one of these codes in these jurisdictions should directly lead users to send bitcoins, receive bitcoins, view account details (balances and transaction history), or purchase goods/services.
Image source: author
As for how smartphone custody wallets work, they like to link your email address to your account for identification and recovery purposes, so you can install them on multiple devices or recover the account on a new device. In the case of Machankura, it is tied to your phone number. Assuming your phone or SIM card is stolen, it implies that your funds have also been stolen, or if someone swaps your number, they could have access to your funds. You are expected to take advantage Machankura as an incredible payment infrastructure rather than a long-term self-custodial product with the expectation of anticipating different enhancements and updates as it develops.
BitText appears to be an open-source version of Machankura, throwing both hands in the air anticipating global contributions that could fix and improve this Bitcoin-on-USSD solution by better targeting custody, security, and privacy, as well as transactions interoperability with the Bitcoin Layer 2 Lightning Network.
Banking the unbanked by creating products focused on solving the specific problems of Africans’ payment and settlement systems, while leveraging decentralized innovation such as Bitcoin, is a journey that Bitcoin developers in Africa have taken. undertaken intensely over the past two months. These efforts led by different initiatives and the collective support of the plebs and the Africa Bitcoin ecosystem deserve our thanks.
This is a guest post by Heritage Falodun. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.