Kenyan Distributed Ledgers and Artificial Intelligence task force chairman Bitange Ndemo has said that the government should tokenize the economy, local news outlet The Star reported September 25. The taskforce was established in March by the government of the Republic of Kenya in order to evaluate proposals on how to deploy blockchain technology in the public sector. The working group consists of local blockchain startups, experts, researchers, regulatory bodies, lawyers and other associated parties. Speaking at an Information and Communication Technology Ministry (ICT) stakeholders meeting with the private sector, Ndemo reportedly asserted that the government should consider tokenization of the …

Bitcoin and blockchain tech are ripe for mainstream adoption in Africa, where the population is well positioned to embrace the innovative technologies as alternatives to the expensive and/or outdated banking systems scattered across the continent. Lack of economic infrastructure paired with inadequate financial education has left a large portion of Africans without bank accounts or basic monetary means. However, in many countries the proliferation of smartphones has allowed access to alternative financial services which have become a dominant means of payment, especially among the high proportion of millennials. Bitcoin’s appeal is in large part due to its accessibility and inclusivity, …

“M-Pesa operator Safaricom will not be required to grant access to bitcoin startup BitPesa amid an ongoing legal dispute.” This was the ruling on the 14th of December 2015, by a Kenyan High Court judge. What does this imply for Bitpesa as a company? How does this affect the Bitcoin environment in the sub-region? Is Bitpesa rattled by this development? It has been a series of speculations since the news broke of the joint suit by Lipisha and Bitpesa against Safaricom for the abrupt cut-off from M-Pesa, a platform of Safaricom which served Bitpesa until the 12th of November 2015. …

Yesterday, Safaricom customers were greeted with the news that they should prepare themselves for an M-Pesa service shutdown over the coming weekend, on April 18 and 19. Engineers will be handling a critical part of the two-year project of moving its servers from Germany to Kenya. Since its inception in 2005, the mobile money service has had its servers hosted in the European country. While speaking at a press conference in Nairobi, the company’s financial services general manager, Betty Mwangi, said that having the server system located in Kenya is intended to bring faster and more efficient service delivery. Faster …