Binance wants to set up a digital city in Nigeria

Binance is reportedly in talks with authorities to set up a digital city in Nigeria and develop blockchain technology in the country.

Binance’s digital city project in Nigeria

The Nigerian government is reportedly in advanced talks with the crypto exchange giant to jointly develop an area in the country that is fully digital and thus give a boost to fintech and especially digital asset development in the African country.

According to Bloomberg reports, the goal would be to create a future digital hub on the example of Dubai, which recently passed precise regulations on marketing and promoting the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and one of the richest in commodities, especially oil, has long been focusing on digital assets and blockchain to diversify its economy, helped in this by the fact that it is one of the countries with the youngest average population in the world. Fintech startups such as Interswitch Ltd. and Flutterwave Inc. are prime examples of how the fintech sector is becoming an increasingly important sector of the Nigerian economy.

According to Chainalysis’ Global Index Adoption, Nigeria ranks sixth among the countries with the most widespread cryptocurrency adoption. According to a study by CoinGecko, Nigeria would be the country where interest in cryptocurrencies has increased the most since April, when the market began its great descent.

Nigeria’s goals for the country’s technological development

The Nigerian stock exchange said in June that it planned to launch a blockchain-enabled platform next year to deepen trading and attract young investors to the market.

Now this partnership with Binance by the Nigerian government confirms the African country’s desire to become a true hub for the crypto space. 

Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, CEO of Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), who is expected to be the government’s point of contact in partnering with Binance to implement this project, said:

“Our goal is to generate a thriving virtual free zone to take advantage of a nearly trillion-dollar virtual economy in blockchain and the digital economy.”

Binance for its part is interested in this partnership project because it could be an excellent opportunity to enter a country with interesting prospects like Nigeria, and then expand to other African countries. 

For some time now Changpeng Zhao‘s exchange has begun serious collaboration with government and regulatory authorities in the countries where it operates, to obtain licenses to operate, as obtained recently in Italy and France, to avoid all those infringement proceedings found in many countries over the past three years, and which have led some nations such as Great Britain to ban the exchange’s operations in the country.

This news comes just weeks after another important partnership signed by Binance with the city of Busan in Korea, where the exchange is expected to provide technology and infrastructure support to the city’s blockchain development efforts.