How Decentralized Finance Can Genuinely Build a Healthy African Economy

Africa has been seen by the outside world as backward because many African countries are poor, adapting to new technologies late. The tide is changing as many African countries are developing fast with Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria, leading to technological development. The arrival of smartphones has opened many Africans to the outside world, and many employment opportunities have been created. The development is incomplete without mentioning the contribution of blockchain technology to the African development through decentralized finance.

Will DeFi decentralize power in Africa?

Decentralized finance is building digital assets and smart financial contracts on decentralized applications. Decentralized finance can truly enable the African economy’s development, taking power from the government and giving it to the people. Many African countries are known to suppress the people by creating a centralized economy for the few. Many companies are joining the decentralized finance revolution, but a recent technology that we developed, UTU protocol is leading the development of decentralized finance in the African community. We are building a decentralized network that gives people the power to take control of their digital lives and improve trust among borrowers and lenders with a more human-friendly model of credit.

Can DeFi improve the African banking system?

The banking system of Africa has improved over the past with mobile banking’s introduction has ensured that borderless transactions can be completed with ease. However, there are still many lapses in the African banking system; some banks have many problems like long withdrawal queues, failed transfers, and failure of small businesses to obtain a loan because of trust issues. When small businesses cannot get loans to build their startups, it affects African countries’ overall development. With our platform, the problem of trust in finance is eliminated. With our platform DeFi protocols, users can choose the type of DeFi protocols they want to use based on better information from sources they trust. We will provide DeFi recommendation for the user according to a decentralized trust AI powering the system.

Blockchain-powered decentralized finance can remove barriers to the traditional finance system. DeFi powered networks are entirely resistant to government policies. Some African governments are notorious for creating policies that are cruel to small businesses and the general populace. Some give loans to some specific people, and also only a few companies are in the finance system, which subjects the finance system to total control. With DeFi, power is restored to the people. DeFi creates a system in which people have access to financial products. There are no barriers that prevent their daily transactions entirely, and a decentralized protocol replaces the cruel government. our ecosystem is built to encourage startups to build their DeFi system and ensure that the systems’ users are fully protected from fraud through a decentralized rating system.

DeFi loans will replace the traditional borrowing system

Some African find it challenging to borrow small business loans. There is no specific system that determines the creditworthy businesses. Our platform provides a fully decentralized peer to peer reputation mechanism that solves this problem of trust. Our system provides a credit scoring system that enables peer to peer lending through the DeFi. A lender can review a borrower on the platform. The collateral and the interest rates of the loan can be determined on the platform.

Conclusion

Many economies in Africa are growing fast, and the financial system is revolutionizing, but this development is incomplete without embracing a decentralized financial system. The genuinely decentralized economy created by our platform can finally enable the system that builds trust among borrowers and lenders and take decentralized applications that the people can trust.

About UTU

At UTU we believe in a more human-friendly internet. We are pioneering digital models of decentralized trust built around human beings and how we naturally trust. UTU’s vision is to become the trust infrastructure of the entire internet, replacing anonymous star ratings, reviews, and scores as the de facto trust mechanisms of our digital lives. We do this in service of our Mission — To bridge the gap between how we trust in real life and how we are asked to trust online — to make the internet a safer, more trusted place to gather, share, work, and trade.

UTU is Kiswahili for “Humanity.” It reminds us of our home in Kenya and for whom we build this project. We currently have a team of 40 at our HQ in Nairobi and R&D collaborations with the Agents, Interactions, and Complexity Group at the University of Southampton in the UK as well as the newly established UKRI Trusted Autonomous Systems Hub.

UTU and our subsidiaries have been featured variously in international media, including Pitchbook, NPR, TechCrunch, Analytics India, Aithority, Disrupt Africa, How We Made it in Africa, and others. We won the 2019 East Africa Regional Championship of the Pegasus Tech Ventures Startup World Cup and have been named a 2020 Hello Tomorrow Deep Tech Pioneer.

Check us out on the Web, Twitter, and join us on Telegram in decentralizing the future of digital trust.