A collective including the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, Iota Foundation, the Tony Blair Institute, and the World Economic Forum has partnered to develop a digital platform aimed at digitizing trade across the African continent.
The initiative, named Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade (ADAPT), was announced on Monday. According to the Iota Foundation, ADAPT is an open-source digital public network designed to facilitate cross-border payments using stablecoins and to securely store digital trade documents alongside interoperable digital identities.
Dominik Schiener, co-founder and chairman of the Iota Foundation, stated in an X post that ADAPT has an ambitious goal to be rolled out across all 55 African nations by 2035, with the objective of streamlining trade-related operations.
Among ADAPT's key objectives are generating an additional $70 billion in annual trade, reducing border clearance times from a maximum of 14 days to under three days, and lowering cross-border payment fees from their current range of 6% to 9%.
Schiener further elaborated on the potential impact: "Border & customs clearing will go from weeks to hours, cross-border payments will be reduced to less than 3% and exporters will get access to global trade finance liquidity."
ADAPT Rollout to Commence in Q1
The Iota Foundation has announced that the ADAPT platform will initially launch in Kenya during the first quarter of next year. Following this initial phase, the rollout will extend to Ghana and a third country, which is yet to be confirmed. The full-scale launch is scheduled to begin in 2027 and continue through to 2035.
Schiener expressed confidence in the initiative's success, stating, "This will be a long and challenging road, but thanks to the commitment of the AfCFTA and the dedication of our partners I am convinced that we will realize this mission to connect Africa through the most modern digital trade infrastructure in the world."
The Iota Foundation also noted that the underlying technology has already undergone testing by public authorities in several other countries, including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Structural Inefficiencies Hamper African Trade
Chido Munyati, head of Africa at the World Economic Forum, highlighted that trade inefficiencies represent a significant obstacle for African nations, a challenge she hopes digitization can effectively address.
“Trade inefficiencies remain one of the key barriers to business growth, yet the digitalization of trade processes has the power to transform how African economies connect and collaborate.”
According to the Iota Foundation, key issues contributing to these inefficiencies include reliance on paper-based documentation and the protracted nature of border payments, which can often take weeks to process.
Africa's Growing Role in the Crypto Space
Estimates from the online data platform Statista suggest that by 2026, over 75 million users in Africa will be active in the cryptocurrency space, representing a user rate of 5.9%. The total revenue generated from the continent's crypto market is projected to reach $5.1 billion by 2026.
Recent reports indicate that stablecoins already constitute approximately 43% of the total transaction volume in the Sub-Saharan African region. Chainalysis reported on October 2nd that Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia are among the top five countries leading in this trend.