3/SEA and Africa?
young people are always the future
After 2020, it was so difficult to get passports and visas due to many constraints, making travel abroad quite challenging. In September 2022, because of Token2049 in Singapore, I finally boarded a jet after overcoming so many difficulties and began my three-month exploratory adventure. I traveled to seven nations during this time, including Nigeria, Ghana, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Along with numerous practitioners from crypto, I also got encounter with a lot of new friends. I had the opportunity to witness how crypto was used in the real life.
Let me first describe how I feel about Southeast Asia, where I have stayed for almost two months. I initially didn't have great hope for Southeast Asia because several nations in SEA have experienced a boom in Gamefi and guilds over the past two years under the enormous influence of YGG and Axie Infinity. After YGG, just on the guild track, we have seen renowned guilds like YGGSEA, Ancient8, Guildfi, etc. Their enormous user base gave my colleagues and I the idea that Southeast Asia's crypto market is already quite developed.
However, when I really went to these destinations, I spoke to a lot of locals, especially young locals from different jobs, such as tour guides, drivers, hotel employees, retail sellers, masseuses, and so on. And I discovered that crypto does not have a lot of popularity. I can confidently state to the public that the majority of them have no awareness about crypto. A small percentage of them have heard of Bitcoin, and even fewer have heard that they can make money by playing games. In Bali, I noticed a sim card with Axie Infinity written on it, while in Bangkok, I spotted a Bitkub-sponsored sun umbrella. These were the only cryptographic footprint I have witnessed in SEA apart from those coworking spaces.
Of course, this is hardly a warning sign of doom. Instead, it clearly suggests that SEA still has a lot of untapped potential given its population of over 600 million, high proportion of youth, quick economic growth, and severe wealth and poverty disparities, which laid the groundwork for the arrival of crypto.
After leaving Southeast Asia and spending a short time in Dubai, I traveled to Accra, the capital of Ghana, and Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria. Of these two cities, Lagos impressed me most. There are crowded people (Lagos has a population of more than 12 million), dilapidated roads, low-slung dwellings, and unstable electrical supplies.
In contrast to most Chinese businessmen, who always gather in groups, my team and I went deep into the neighborhood and spoke with the locals about their current circumstances, particularly the difficulties they had in life. We discovered that Nigeria, the nation in Africa with the greatest economy, population, and oil exports, is comparable to China 20 years ago in many ways, worse in some, and more advanced in others. Most of the issues that locals face have really happened in China and other nations as well, particularly in the area of mobile Internet.
We are really enthusiastic about this since other nations, like China, have been working on mobile Internet development for a long time and have tried to figure out the way to solve many of the issues that are occurring in Nigeria now. They have pointed out the direction for us. We think we have a significant advantage when beginning a business in Nigeria, particularly in the area of mobile Internet, which is that "there are traces to follow."
In addition, we will fully utilize blockchain and crypto when we launch a mobile Internet business to increase capital usage efficiency while raising technological proficiency.
Southeast Asia and Africa share several traits with us that make us want to expand into new countries, including their rapid economic growth, large populations of young people, high rates of mobile phone ownership, low incomes, and reasonably developed banking systems.
Below we have several key figures about Indonesia, the Philippines, and Nigeria.
Indonesia
2.77
1.18
4256
30.3
3.7
Philippines
1.11
0.39
3546
26.3
1.56
Nigeria
2.11
0.44
2085
18
2.1
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