Central African Republic To Create Its Own Digital Currency After Becoming The First To Adopt Bitcoin In Africa

The upcoming currency — Sango Coin — is aiming to help the Central African Republic (CAR) further build out its financial industry. During a virtual briefing, President Faustin-Archange Touadera stated that the new digital coin “will be the currency for the next generation,” per the outlet.

Earlier this year, CAR became the second country to adopt Bitcoin, following El Salvador.

Its expected release date may be in the third quarter and the CAR’s nation’s treasury will reportedly hold 20 percent of the Sango Coin.

While the potential rollout timeframe has been shared, no further details have been given by Touadera quite yet. The lack of information is similar to when the news broke out of CAR adopting Bitcoin. The country’s plan ahead has brought forth concerns since “it’s one of the world’s poorest countries with significant infrastructure gaps.” 

“The Central African Republic sits on a mountain of resources — gold, diamonds, rare minerals, unexploited resources. Sango Coin will enable the direct access to our resources for the whole world,” Touadera said in response to the raised concerns.

However, it’s reported that majority of CAR’s budget comes from donors, as well as only 557,000 of its population have access to the Internet.

Previously in June 2021, AfroTech reported on Ghana launching a new digital currency — e-cedi. The first-of-its-kind digital currency in Africa was proposed to have three pilot stages before confirmation of it being a positive for the local economy, according to Dr. Ernest Addison. Also, the mission behind it is to move consumers away from decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin — that way they can have a more secure option.

“The Bank of Ghana was one of the first African Central Banks to declare that we were working on a digital currency looking at the concept of an e-cedi,” Dr. Addison said at a news conference in Accra, at the time.

He added: “From that pilot, we will be able to determine whether this is feasible and what sort of things need to be tweaked to make it work effectively.”