- Monday marked the opening of the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) competition - the biggest men’s football championship series in Africa.
- At the same time, Binance announced its formal relationship with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) as well as its official sponsorship for the AFCON 2021 competition, becoming the first crypto and blockchain sponsor for the event.
- The Kingdom of Morocco is the frontrunner for Bitcoin trade in North Africa in 2021— despite its illegal status.
AFCON 2021 marks the start of the African sports calendar and will run until Feb 6
Through this partnership, Binance will also be supporting CAF’s social media content which will include the assist of the day, assist of the week and assist of the tournament. This package will feature games from five cities in Cameroon over all six venues.
Veron Mosengo-Omba, the general secretary for CAF, was “delighted to welcome Binance as an official sponsor of the AFCON competition this year.” Mosengo-Omba remarked that he is sure that this relationship would “push African football to a new level.”
Related news: Binance CEO Urges Cryptocurrency Exchanges to go Global instead of Focusing on One Region
Binance’s relationship with CAF is a part of an ongoing drive to deliver financial services to Africans who they claim would ordinarily have extremely limited access to banks and other financial institutions. So far, Binance claims it has already offered over 541,000 Africans access to free seminars on crypto.
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Binance's director for Africa, Emmanuel Babalola, stated: “Football is the most popular sport in Africa.” He noted that they expect this support would help “corroborate our objective to take crypto mainstream throughout the continent.”
Morocco is number one for Bitcoin trading in North Africa
Moroccans already hold 0.9 million bitcoins, which accounts for around 2.4 percent of the country's entire population, according to estimates from Triple-A, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency distributor, and aggregator.
This places the kingdom as the most populous nation in North Africa and in the top 50 cryptocurrency users, slightly ahead of Portugal, in terms of cryptocurrency population proportion.
Useful Tulips, a site that records peer-to-peer Bitcoin trading throughout the world, has confirmed the upward trend in BTC trading volume. The Kingdom of the West, as it is called in the area, has been the undisputed leader in BTC trading in North Africa over the last year, only being beaten by Saudi Arabia when the whole Middle East and North Africa region is taken into consideration.
Unfortunately for cryptocurrency fans, there has been no change in crypto-related regulations in recent years, despite widespread support.
According to the Moroccan Foreign Exchange Office, a "secret payment method that is not backed by any financial institution" would not be supported.
Despite the fact that the legislation was passed in 2017, adoption has not been slowed, as seen by the fact that Moroccan crypto aficionados continue to find ways around the regulation, according to the statistics.
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For BTC trading, the Egyptian pound is gaining ground on the Moroccan dirham in the nearby area. According to UsefulTulips, Egypt is $20,000 shy of catching up with Morocco over the course of 30 days. Although it is still illegal to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in Egypt, even a small proportion of the country's 102 million people and $360 billion GDP engaging in "illicit" activities would make a significant difference.
Related post: Crypto Adoption is on the Rise in Africa, According to Chainalysis
Harmattan Energy is planning to develop one of Africa's biggest wind farms in order to support Morocco's orange-tinted future, according to the company.
One of the goals of the massive 900MW wind farm being constructed in Dakhla, in the Sahara area, is to "power blockchain computers." Because Bitcoin mining and trade are still prohibited in the United States, the organization cannot publicly claim to be engaged in Bitcoin mining.
Cointelegraph reported on the project's call for tender in 2018 and said that selling at least 20% of its power production back to the Moroccan government might be a feasible alternative. The first findings from Harmattan are scheduled to be available by the end of the first quarter of this year.
Other developments include the addition of functionality for cryptocurrency purchases in Moroccan dirhams via a third-party platform, Simplex, in April 2020. For BTC work in Nigeria, it operates in the same manner as Naira purchases for BTC work. Even if it's not nearly as simple to purchase bitcoin on Binance as it is in the adjacent United Arab Emirates, which has a direct fiat on-ramp, it's a promising first step forward.
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It will be interesting to see whether Moroccan MPs change their minds about outlawing Bitcoin. As things are, Morocco will continue to be the driving force behind terrorism in North Africa, despite the fact that it is still a clandestine activity.
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