Nigeria’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), dubbed “eNaira” is presented today by President Muhammadu Buhari. The country has accelerated its deployment of a digital currency, as locals turn to cryptocurrency overwhelmingly.
The announcement was made by the country’s central bank, as Crypto-Auditor is aware. Nigeria’s MNBC will be “activated” today, following an announcement by the president. The institution recalls that this progress is based on several years of research, and meetings with several players in the field, including banks, FinTech solutions operators and merchants.
Source: ledgerinsights.com
The Central Bank emphasizes financial inclusion, one of the objectives of the project:
“The eNaira marks a major milestone in the evolution of money, and the Central Bank is committed to ensuring that the eNaira, like the physical Naira, is accessible to everyone.”
It is the populations that are the least financially integrated who are targeted in particular, including “the inhabitants of rural areas and the unbanked population”.
Nigeria stood out for the speed at which it wanted to issue its CBDC. The country is the first GDP of the African continent, and its entry into the field of digital currencies should be particularly followed.
ENaira has several vocations: it should make it possible, on the one hand, to facilitate remittances to the country from expatriate Nigeriens. In addition, the government seems to want to offer a payment system to compete with cryptocurrencies, which by nature are not controllable.
It must be said that the inhabitants of Nigeria are particularly followers of cryptos. The country ranks 6th among the territories with the most cryptocurrency adoption, behind Kenya and ahead of Venezuela. The eNaira deviates greatly from the latter, however: it is fully traceable by the government, and users are subject to limits in terms of daily transactions.
