Technological Transformation
Between July 2025 and June 2026, the total value of all cryptocurrencies fell by about half, a $2.1 trillion drop and the worst bear market since the collapses of 2022. Chainalysis's 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index, published on 23 September, found that Sub-Saharan Africa still recorded the fastest growth of any region. On-chain value received in the region rose 13.4%. The growth came almost entirely from peer-to-peer transfers between personal wallets, whose share of regional crypto activity rose from 4.5% to 8.1%. Under the index's new four-factor method, Nigeria ranked third in the world overall and first for both domestic peer-to-peer activity and cross-border flows. South Africa ranked ninth overall, fourth for peer-to-peer and third for cross-border flows.
The reason Africa held up while prices fell is the type of crypto it uses. Chainalysis reports that 96% of global peer-to-peer crypto value now moves in stablecoins, which are tokens pegged to the US dollar or another currency. A stablecoin payment is sized by what the sender needs to move, not by market sentiment, so it continues whether prices rise or fall. Across the continent, crypto is increasingly being used as a payments system that runs on dollar-denominated tokens. Regulators have recognised this, and 2026 is the year most of the main markets began writing rules for it.
Why stablecoins found a home here
Africa already had a large phone-based payments system before stablecoins arrived. According to the GSMA, mobile money processed more than $2 trillion worldwide in 2025, and Africa accounted for close to 65% of that value, more than $1.4 trillion. The continent has over 1.2 billion registered mobile money accounts and about 347 million active users. Keeping money on a phone and sending it without visiting a bank is routine for hundreds of millions of people.
What mobile money does not do well is move money across borders, or offer an easy way to hold dollars. The World Bank still ranks Sub-Saharan Africa as the most expensive region in the world for sending remittances. Many of its currencies, including the naira, cedi, birr and Malawian kwacha, have lost much of their value in recent years. Stablecoins address both problems. Globally, Chainalysis estimates that cross-border stablecoin transfers rose 77.5% in the year to June 2026, from $124.2 billion to $220.3 billion, and calls this a conservative lower bound. The average transfer was about $3,000, which suggests a trader paying a supplier or a family sending money home rather than an institutional investor.
Commercial infrastructure is developing quickly. Yellow Card, founded in Nigeria in 2019, now operates in more than 20 African countries. It says most of its stablecoin volume comes from cross-border payments, treasury management and transfers between African countries, not retail speculation. In May 2026 it announced a partnership with Mastercard, piloting stablecoin payments first in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and the UAE, following an earlier deal with Visa. Opera's MiniPay wallet, whose users are mostly in Africa, has passed 16 million activated wallets and launched a Visa debit card in June 2026 so that stablecoin balances can be spent at ordinary merchants. As Yellow Card's Gillian Darko summarised the model in September: dollar rails for cross-border settlement, local-currency stablecoins for domestic use.
Kenya: from 'unregulated' to licensed
Kenya has moved furthest from treating crypto as a grey area to licensing it. The Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 came into force on 4 November 2025. The implementing regulations were gazetted in late July 2026 (reported as Legal Notice No. 134), and the transition period for existing operators is reported to end on 4 November 2026, two weeks from now. Responsibility is split. The Capital Markets Authority oversees exchanges and trading platforms, while the Central Bank of Kenya licenses stablecoin issuers. Legal commentaries report that the final rules lowered the minimum capital for stablecoin issuers from the draft's KES 500 million to KES 300 million. They also reportedly bar individuals from promoting or issuing virtual-asset offerings, a direct response to the influencer-driven schemes that have hurt Kenyan retail investors.
Kenya is a significant test because it has M-Pesa. Safaricom's system already handles most of the domestic payment needs that stablecoins serve elsewhere. Licensed stablecoins are therefore more likely to compete in cross-border and treasury payments than in local retail. The November deadline will show how many of the exchanges and wallet providers now active in Kenya choose to be licensed and how many leave the market.
South Africa: licensed platforms, controlled borders
South Africa approaches the issue from another direction. Its main crypto platforms, including Luno and VALR, have operated under Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) authorisation since crypto assets were declared a financial product in 2022, so licensing exchanges is not new. The current debate is about money leaving the country. On 17 April 2026, National Treasury published draft Capital Flow Management Regulations to replace the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961, and these brought crypto assets into the capital-flow framework for the first time. The industry objected strongly over criminalisation and property rights. On 15 May, Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) promised a dedicated framework and said possession of crypto would not be criminalised and rules would not apply retrospectively.
That framework, a draft Crypto Asset Manual for Cross-Border Activities, was published on 3 August 2026, and comments closed on 30 September. It sets out authorisation and supervision for crypto service providers that move value into or out of South Africa. According to commentary by law firm ENSafrica, it would stop South African companies from moving crypto assets across borders while allowing individuals limited offshore transfers within exchange-control allowances. Some commentators also report that the SARB is unlikely to approve foreign-currency stablecoins such as USDT and USDC for domestic payments, though that position has not been formally finalised.
The private sector has meanwhile issued a rand alternative. ZARU, launched on 3 February 2026 by Luno, EasyEquities, Lesaka Technologies and Sanlam Specialist Asset Management, is a stablecoin pegged one-to-one to the rand. Its reserves are held in rand cash, deposits and government-bond equivalents, with monthly independent attestations. It is currently available only to qualifying institutions, with retail access planned once the regulatory position is settled. South Africa's choices of tight controls on dollar tokens, room for a rand token and licensed exchanges are likely to influence the rest of the Southern African Customs Union.
Ghana, Mauritius and Uganda: a shared rulebook
Three smaller jurisdictions are trying to coordinate their rules. Ghana, Mauritius and Uganda are each developing rules that treat stablecoins as a separate class of asset, not just one more type of crypto. They have also discussed common standards, joint testing and, eventually, recognising each other's licences. The Bank of Ghana, which oversees the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act passed in December 2025, is considering one licence for locally issued, mainly cedi-denominated stablecoins and a separate framework for foreign-currency tokens already in circulation. Tahiru Alhassan of the bank's virtual-assets department describes a cedi stablecoin as the same currency in a new wrapper and potentially a tool that supports monetary policy rather than undermining it.
Mauritius's Financial Services Commission, which has licensed virtual-asset providers since 2021, issued a stablecoin guidance note in mid-August 2026 covering reserves, redemption rights, custody and disclosure. Supervisors there say they will judge a token by what actually backs it, not by whether it calls itself a stablecoin. Uganda's Capital Markets Authority has a first draft of a Virtual Assets Service Providers Bill built on the principle of same activity, same risk, same regulation. Ghana and Rwanda have also signed a fintech licence passporting agreement, the first step toward the cross-border regulatory model that stablecoin businesses want. Mauritian officials have cautioned that mutual recognition should come only after trust has been built through shared data and joint pilots.
Nigeria: the largest market, still settling its rules
Nigeria, the region's largest crypto economy, is regulating from a weaker starting point. In the 2025 Chainalysis period it received about $92.1 billion in on-chain value, almost three times South Africa's total. The Investments and Securities Act 2025 classified digital assets as securities and placed exchanges and service providers under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), while the Central Bank of Nigeria keeps responsibility for payments. Legal guides report that a January 2026 SEC circular raised paid-up capital for digital-asset exchanges and custodians to ₦2 billion, with a compliance deadline in mid-2027. They also report that offshore platforms serving Nigerians must set up a capitalised local subsidiary or operate through a licensed local partner. Only a few exchanges, including Quidax and Busha, have SEC approval. Reports on specific stablecoin rules for Nigeria and on the status of the naira-pegged cNGN conflict, and the details should be checked against SEC publications. Even so, the direction is clear: Nigeria wants its peer-to-peer activity, the largest in the world, to run through licensed and taxable channels.
The risks behind the rulebooks
Three risks stand out. The first is dollarisation. Most stablecoins circulating in Africa are pegged to the US dollar. If they become the default way to save, central banks lose influence over money supply and credit, which is why Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria are all encouraging local-currency tokens alongside or instead of dollar ones. The second is exclusion. CGAP's Ivo Jeník notes that about 1.3 billion adults worldwide remain unbanked. Stablecoin services that require bank accounts, full identity checks and smartphones could leave out the people who would benefit most. The third is fragmentation. A cross-border payment system governed by more than 50 sets of national rules, with different capital requirements, could end up recreating the very costs it was meant to remove. The UN Economic Commission for Africa wants stablecoin rules aligned with the AfCFTA and the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), but there is no continental mechanism to achieve that yet.
The main conclusion is that Africa is not adopting crypto in the speculative sense the term once implied. It is building a dollar-denominated settlement layer on top of the mobile-money systems it already has, while regulators try to keep that layer under some national control. Kenya's transition deadline on 4 November, South Africa's final cross-border manual, Ghana's decision on cedi stablecoins and Nigeria's capital deadline will show whether the region ends up with a connected regulated system or a set of separate national ones.
