The building of its own cryptocurrency, the Sango, and the prospective “first African crypto-hub” with “zero taxation” were both officially inaugurated on Sunday in the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest nations and the scene of a nine-year civil war.
At a “online event” to introduce “a new digital system powered by Blockchain technology,” President Faustin Archange Touadรฉra announced that his nation had become the second in the world, after El Salvador, to embrace bitcoin as an official currency and allow its use.
The construction of this “Sango Coin” and a “Crypto Island,” a platform permitting this digital currency to become “the catalyst for the tokenization of the massive natural resources” of the Central African Republic, as well as their timeframe and implementation specifics, were not made explicit.
The worldwide cryptocurrency crisis, in which the price of bitcoin is in free fall and many crypto platforms are on the verge of bankruptcy, has led to the creation of this “Sango project,” named after the official language alongside French.
Touadรฉra lamented that “financial services are almost inaccessible to many inhabitants” in Africa, “where 57 percent of the population is unbanked,” and claimed “to have found the solution”: “the smartphone,” which allows for cryptocurrency trading and investment.
“The smartphone is the alternative to traditional banking, cash, and financial bureaucracy,” declared the president of the second-least developed nation in the world, according to the UN, where only 14.3% of its more than 5 million residents will have access to electricity in 2022 and even less to the internet, and where 71% of its citizens will be living below the international poverty line (less than $1.90 USD per day) and more than half will require humanitarian aid.
The head of state exclaimed that the Central African Republic was “sitting on a mountain of untapped wealth” that included gold, diamonds, and rare metals. “Sango Coin will be direct access to our resources for the world,” he added, in an effort to draw in investors and “jump-start the engines of the economy.”
At the end of April, the international community, which already held Mr. Touadรฉra in high esteem for having given his nation to Russia and the sulphurous Wagner’s “mercenaries” in exchange for military assistance against the rebels, expressed confusion and disapproval over the adoption of bitcoin as a reference currency.
A terrible civil war that has been ravaging the Central African Republic since 2013 has lessened in intensity since 2018.
