By Guest Author
Afreum is a novel approach to financing the underbanked in Africa. But their strategy is not limited to any jurisdiction. Instead, Afreum has successfully connected the world to the underbanked and the underbanked to the world.
This is a common goal of several blockchains and FinTech startups. Even the Stellar Development Foundation has set out to modernize cross-border transactions.
“The way the global financial establishment is structured today, people are born into an economy just like they’re born into a political system. Stellar is a way out: it lets people participate in a worldwide, stable, financial network regardless of where they live.” — Stellar Development Foundation
As ambitious as these initiatives are it is still difficult for most of the world to access the wider, global markets without non-exploitive fees, inflation, taxes, and cryptocurrency exchanges.
This is particularly the case for African countries.
The State of Cryptocurrency in Africa
When cryptocurrency volatility is more reliable than a nation’s main finance model(s) an all-encompassing financial solution is needed.
In fact 32% of Nigerian respondents from a 2020 study stated that said they use or own cryptocurrency. This alludes to a growing need and a willingness to adopt digital currency. But a digital financial layer is not enough. An ecosystem that truly understands each country’s needs can fill the gap between access and reliability to global funds.
This is why Afreum https://afreum.com is perfectly timed during the upheaval from government-controlled money to decentralized digital conversion of assets.
“Inflation has risen over 300% since 2018” — Stellar.org
While the people of Africa are accustomed to remittance and the efforts required to access global transactions, fee structures are questionable at best and predatorial at worst as the nation’s people are taken advantage of in their need to bank outside the country’s unreliable financial system(s).
Afreum’s Accomplishments to Date
It is not uncommon for an over-hyped ICO to fall flat after its release. Also, the community has witnessed mainstream attention artificially inflate several blatantly non-utility tokens.
But two things, when combined, are a reliable constant in the world of DeFi; utility and adoption. Several steps outlined in Afreum’s whitepaper have been fulfilled.
Step one:
In order to connect Afreum to the wider-world of cryptocurrency Afreum’s DeFi ecosystem has been built on the Stellar network and has been tradable on Stellar-based decentralized exchanges since December, 2020. As we have seen, transferring between blockchains is often costly and problematic. Thus the existence of “crypto swap” platforms such as UniSwap. Swapping is a great way to transfer tokens for a fee if they are both supported but the future is certainly built-in transferability.
Step two:
Future goals for the Afreum Wallet include “facilitate on-boarding and off-boarding in fiat via bank accounts” however a direct application for real-world users via an SMS version of the wallet “just works” for users who do not have access to banking and perhaps only access to legacy phones.
The whitepaper goes on to explain how this can open up the world of finance to unbanked people all over the world by creating their first reliable P2P/P2B payment system even going so far as to offer staking, savings, and loans that pay interest.
Step three:
The brilliance of the Afreum Liquidity Engine is deep economical science but it’s very easy to understand that liquidity is created via staking while creating access to a multitude of Dapps and thus connectivity to other blockchains with Afreum Bridge.
Afreum Bridge currently allows AFR (BEP 20) and AFR (ERC 20) tokens to facilitate cross-platform transactions on Binance Smart Chain and the Ethereum network.
Step four:
Afreum’s built-in stake or swap ability for over 40 intercontinental currencies include Franc, Rand and others is now live. This creates the ability for users of these currencies to be connected to blockchain tokens around the world.
From the Nigeria Naira to AFR token then onto Binance or Ethereum’s network and back again.
Afreum is building a truly global finance bridge; and it’s working.
What’s next?
Learn more about the Afreum ecosystem, see updates earlier and chat with the team and community on Twitter @Afreum1 and Telegram https://t.me/Afreum
About Afreum
Afreum was founded on October 5th, 2020 with the launch of the Afreum blackpaper, which outlines an ecosystem design and development roadmap for DeFi-like applications and mobile payment apps for Africa, powered by a suite of cryptocurrencies on the Stellar blockchain.
The Afreum Ecosystem leverages AFREUM’s anchor token (AFR), Governance and incentives token (AFRX) and African utility tokens such as the Nigerian Naira (ANGN) and the South African Rand (AZAR).
All tokens are freely exchangeable via the Afreum Liquidity Engine-powered staking and swapping pools, as well as the Stellar DEX. The Afreum Whitepaper, Afreum Wallet, Afreum Save, Afreum Earn, and Afreum Bridge can all be found at the official Afreum website at https://afreum.com
