The Perfect Storm

• This year has been busy, and there are four very big things that happened in the world of tech and digital money.
  The introduction of the eNaira
  The White Paper on Open Banking
  The Nigeria Start-Up Act
  The Nigeria CBN Cashless Policy

All of the above happened at different times and, seemingly, without central coordination; they weren’t connected but they actually happened and this is a positive. All of the above actions are going to deepen adoption of digital and subsequently lead to more digital investment in Nigeria. A push for digital, by which I mean paperless, cashless and contactless, is a net positive for us all.

I’ve been a fervent supporter of all of these changes, however the idealist in me wishes that there had been a little more centralised coordination to really push through some of the new policies in a practical way. I’ll give you an example. Imagine if the Government had enforced a timeline on all social benefits and the collection of taxes through the eNaira. It would have built upon its own use case and forced people to adopt the new technology. Not overnight, of course - but it would have set us up in the right direction. In addition, imagine the data that they would have collected through enforcing these transactions via a digital platform?

Data collection is something the Nigerian Government isn’t yet particularly adept at; but it has the building…