Implications of the National Policy of Blockchain in Nigeria on the growth of the Web3 ecosystem

[Music] and if you're wondering if I'm a senate for the Republic please call the kidnappers off uh my real name is Senator uh [Music] I'm the lead partner at Infinity Warriors the law firm and the immediate advice of these stakeholders and blockchain Technology Association I'm sloven okay what are we talking about the implications of um Nigeria's National blockchain policy on the growth of military ecosystems interestingly what never happened before open in Nigeria this year when the federal government of Nigeria decided that it was time for Nigeria to have a direction as far as blockchain abduction is concerned and for the first time we had a Federal Ministry of communications and digital economy working closely with the national information on technology development agencies it's the develop what is called the national blockchain policy I was a secretary of a general secretary of um seban at the time when this National Police school was being developed Nigeria now has the policy direction as far as motivation adoption uh revolution of blockchain is concerned quickly just for context many times when we talk about web free blockchain cryptocurrencies sometimes we miss the context and I think this is why a lot of people would not see things from how Eric Anan has just painted it we think this is just something it should be blah blah blah and off you go oh look at this very closely will you say that we are in a data driven economy but I think that we take that for granted a lot we don't really know understand what it means we think it's it's becoming cliche in a data-driven economy beta is King and if you're talking about data from the centuries long ago being stored in different ways so when we talk about blockchain technology we talk about where three decentralization it's basically about how data is being stored now this is the evolution of data so when we've moved away from Double Entry accounting we're moving toward where by 1.0 um as well with cloud storage and all about social media and now decentralized records having that in mind guys when we say that it's time for us to have a national blockchain it's also because we understand that in the digital economy there is the 3DS according three days of the digital economy we talk about digitization talk about digitalization and talk about decentralization these are the three things started evolving in the 50s it started with digitization but we've moved away from there and we'll talk about new business models we're talking about today and having more a fintech platform today you it doesn't matter who you are where you are your WeChat your Twitter and you're already talking about how to enable payments on Twitter as well this is digitalization but here we are here to talk more about decentralization which takes us to web 3.0 let's not get it wrong when it comes with 3.0 it's not all about the blockchain what if and zero is going to be um it's gonna be combining various imagine Technologies including artificial intelligence including virtual reality uh talk about the Multiverse and the rest of them but we need to appreciate where we are coming from and where we are now this doesn't mean that business and that is why Nigeria has Africa's bigger biggest economy as the most populous black nation in the world believes that it has to show some leadership when it comes to blockchain adoption so in 2013 this year he came up with what is called the national blockchain policy for the country and what's that all about division how do we make Nigeria a blockchain powered economy one that can dry trust Innovation growth and posterity for all that's really the vision of the federal government under the former president uh muhammadu buhari does that Vision make sense does it make sense for Nigeria to be a blockchain power economy can really become a blockchain part economy is it possible let's see how possible that might be if you see things as far back as 2020 that the blockchain sector alone can contribute as much as this 1.76 trillion globally to the global economy and Nigeria wants to have some part of that pie is it possible how big can we get from this are we already getting it or are others getting it from Nigeria basically when you talk about the global economy you are working at different sectors right across different places in Nigeria you'll be looking at a lot of sectors from the agricultural sector downtown supply chain industry people or the governments imagines that we can leverage those characteristics of the blockchain transparency traceability security decentralization all right to be able to enable services in these sectors to become more efficient more trust oriented as well and then boom so this is basically the characteristics of the blockchain that the national blockchain policy of Nigeria is open to be able to organize public sector in partnership with private sector to leverage for the purpose of creating that blockchain power the economy and this is the presidential mandates that the former president uh mohammedu buhari gave so I'm taking this from here so that we understand that this is already something at the presidential level and it's a directive to guys like come the Central Bank of Nigeria the secret is an Exchange Commission the national University's commission the national Information Technology development agency and the rest of them I'm basically saying that we want to strengthen Nigeria's economy we want to expand we want to create jobs we want to do a lot with jobs and all of that and Regulators need to create Frameworks that will enable Nigeria leverage this from economic growth so basically what are those key areas that the national blockchain adoption strategy is looking at and how does web 3 come in so first of all Italian development second one is innovation and the third one is adoption so I'll start from telling development Eric Donald was putting it very happily when he mentioned that while we have all of the um growth in terms of population we may not have the capacity that we need to be able to get the best of the population that Africa you know has and we have going into the future it doesn't make a lot of sense does it when you have numbers and they are not functional numbers but what you use is is a country where you have up to about 220 million people and you can't pounds a whole lot that have the capacity to participate in the digital economy this is why it is important that talent development is key in the National blockchain policy and we've already seen it there you know trying to organize in in collaboration with private sectors such as you guys uh a number of training workshops and certification programs from the area of blockchain and I think that's the right way to go we need more of those trainings so if you're in Nigeria whether a local player or a global player in Nigerian markets I would like to encourage you to have some budget for training we need training it's part of the world and perhaps uh what was President of Stephen one of the things that I I did notice is that blockchain educational awareness is the easiest way to sell your products in the space when you sell blockchain awareness and education you are Softly so what I'm trying to say that it's not a charity thing there's also business in ensuring the restraining there's um uh blockchain awareness out there secondly there's Innovation part and this part is all about blockchain Solutions why are those situations those um they are wrong they are two they are three and all of those three years that we are supposed to come in I don't believe them are we getting distracted Partnerships to bring those things into the country and I also see how much miles the national budgets startups foreign [Music] the government wants to ensure that there are actually sustainable use cases real use cases for blockchain technology in Nigeria I I am aware that there are many many use cases but how many are solid enough to create markets in Nigeria or in Africa we see various use cases as well I have also seen case I have some monkey heads immunity space I'm not a big fan of that anyway so I'll certainly be biased but I think that just like Eric Eric was saying earlier blockchain adoption in Nigeria and Africa generally is a need not a once so when you chase monkey heads and all that I think typically they take to Africa should be looking at something a bit more sustainable something that has more use case out there and there's a lot of problems in Nigeria and Africa generally but I imagine that we could focus on in terms of adoption um this is an interesting one very interesting and this has never had happened before for the first time the Nigerian government has acknowledged that blockchain in financial services will play a huge role they've gone ahead to acknowledge that financial institutions in Nigeria which to themselves adopt blockchain technology for the purpose of ensuring efficiency and transparency in their system and not just that the federal government went ahead to say this we recognize cryptocurrencies if you are from CBN here you might cringe your dots but this is the Nigerian government working and this is a national policy document endorsed by the president of the Republic saying that we recognize cryptocurrencies and what we are going to do is to ensure that we work with all of The Regulators in that space the CBN the SEC went down the rest of them to make sure that when we leverage the opportunities that cryptocurrencies provide while also minimizing the risk through AML you know anti-money laundering compliance regulations and the rest of them so this is Nigeria now so when you go online and you Google and they say crypto is illegal in Nigeria call me crypto is not illegal in Nigeria as a matter of fact no one not even in Central Bank ever declared crypto illegal they are simply restricted cryptocurrency transactions in Nigerian banking system any other thing you do outside the banking system is just fine but I don't want to go into legal legal um uh arguments because I also have an article out there that shows clearly that even in CBN is not in the in the legal position to declare anything of such illegal so for work-free ecosystem for players in your period ecosystems what is the expected outcome or what have you expected outcomes as far as the national blockchain policy is concerned one we should expect that there will be increasing skilled blockchain Workforce we don't have enough Workforce in the blockchain space currently especially when it comes to building layer one uh protocols or Solutions um the the most skills we have seen in the Nigerian space has been around the commercial aspects of um approaching technology which is basically marketing you know education uh unlimited aspects maybe management as well business developments we've not seen um key players pushing Workforce regarding development of blockchain solutions we need to invest in that so I imagine that we're free um players will be able to Leverage The National blockchain adoption for a policy to drive more collaborations around building skilled Workforce virtual Workforce secondly which is very very um similar to the previous one is having higher quality of blockchain talents right of course creation of new jobs we need jobs and I've seen the blockchain space create jobs for a lot of people including undergraduates in Nigerian High institutions we need to pray that a bit more so that we can bring in more people as as uh our continent continues to grow in terms of population um they've increased competitiveness I can assure you I was at the CBN recently where when I was invited to um our lecture on blockchain policy and regulations at the illegal Departments of the CBN and one of the conversations that um came up was that increasingly we now see um uh foreigners who also reach out to the central bank saying that we can build this for you we can do this with the email we can do that for you so there will be increased competition since the national blockchain policy was issued I can tell you for free that we have seen a lot of private sector players coming to the Nigerian space and try to pitch one idea or the other around building Central Bank visual currencies around building um various Solutions across various sectors sectors like banking you know uh intellectual property has more facts land registry management and all that so if you're a player in this space that cares about um building infrastructure this is the time to leverage the blockchain policy to build even better under Innovation as you can see here um there are a number of outcomes expected we expect for me we expect that there will be more regulatory sound boxes and there will be more um friendly Frameworks for regulating blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the country I think it's only a matter of time when the Central Bank of Nigeria will have to review its February 2021 cryptocurrency secular to officially say that we are now ready for um business as far as crypto in the banking sector is concerned in wrapping up opportunities for our three ecosystems in Nigeria so basically I think that we can start building products with free products and services that integrates um Financial Services the government is very very interested in that um use case in the country also I think that we expect to see more investments in that space I have seen some um back in my law firm uh infusion lawyers I've seen people knock on our doors to ask is this the right time to make investments in Nigeria as the blockchain space I think so so I think that is the time to expect investment in this space if you're a parent founder or Buddha this is the time to start thinking and building those products like Eric will see so that you can get through attraction Investments also this is the time to focus on also having some local blockchain infrastructure f3m is great Bitcoin is great and the rest of them but we also think that in line with Nigeria's National policy on ICC well we want some kind of local content in that area that's why I love what guys like um I think uh foreign policy [Music] and then lastly uh this is the time for stakeholder engagements so don't just do what you do in your labs and other offices this is the time to reach out you know Network engage stakeholders for more including Regulators The Regulators are ever ready right now to speak with anyone about how to drive blockchain adoption in the country so this is the times we have that conversation and thankfully there's a new government in charge and this new government I'm aware from who I see is capital history oriented so they want to do business uh lastly uh public sector private sector participation uh I'm also a partnership that is very key there is no way the government is going to do this alone the government doesn't have the money and will source to be able to drive with three adoption it is you and I in the public in the private sector who can do this better all we have to do is design the design programs get um government's participation or Partnerships and they are ever ready to do so um sometime in October this year there's going to be between Nigeria conference hosted by the government itself so the government of Nigeria is very ready for business and this is what the national blockchain policy is all about to enable Innovation to drive blockchain education and to empower everyone so that we can all prosper in Nigeria's digital economy thank you