Nigeria and Binance Build a Blockchain Hub City for Blockchain Projects

NEPZA, the Nigerian government agency responsible for export processing zones, announced on Saturday that it is in talks with cryptocurrency exchange Binance to establish a “virtual free zone” dedicated to blockchain technology and the digital economy.

The National Economic and Production Zones Authority (NEPZA) hopes that the end result will be comparable to Dubai’s online free zone.

Intending to promote sustainable economic growth and entice a wide variety of crypto businesses to be licensed in the emirate, last December Binance committed to helping Dubai establish an industrial hub for global digital assets.

Digital City Plan for Nigeria by Binance

According to Bloomberg reports, the government of Nigeria is in advanced talks with the crypto exchange giant to jointly establish a digital space in the country, which will be a boon for the growth of fintech and digital assets in Africa.

As reported by Bloomberg, the plan would be to build a future digital hub similar to Dubai, which has adopted strict restrictions on the promotion and marketing of the bitcoin and blockchain industries.

For some time now, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and one of the richest in commodities, especially oil, has been focused on digital assets and blockchain to diversify its economy; This is helped by the fact that Nigeria also has one of the youngest average populations in the world.

Nigeria’s increasing reliance on the fintech sector is exemplified by the success of companies such as Interswitch Ltd. and Flutterwave Inc. According to the latest data from Chainalysis’ Global Index Adoption, Nigeria is the sixth most adopted country worldwide for digital currencies.

Since the cryptocurrency market began its spectacular decline in April, CoinGecko found that interest in cryptocurrencies has grown the most in Nigeria.

Pans for technological progress in Nigeria

In June, the Nigerian stock exchange announced plans to introduce a blockchain-enabled platform in 2019 in a bid to expand trading and attract younger investors. The Nigerian government has now confirmed its intention to become a major hub for the crypto space by forming a partnership with Binance.

Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) Managing Director Prof. Adesoji Adesugba, widely regarded as the government’s primary point of contact in its planned partnership with Binance to implement this initiative, said:

Our goal is to generate a thriving virtual free zone to take advantage of a nearly trillion-dollar virtual economy in blockchain and the digital economy.

For Binance, the thought of entering a country with promising potential like Nigeria through this collaborative project is appealing. Eventually, the company hopes to expand its operations throughout Africa.

In order to avoid the infringement cases that have been going on in many countries for the past three years – and which have led some countries, such as the UK, to ban the exchange’s operations in the country – Changpeng Zhao’s exchange has officially started serious cooperation with authorities and regulators. officials in the countries where it operates, to obtain a license to operate, as recently obtained in Italy and France.

This comes just a few weeks after Binance entered into a similarly significant deal with the Korean city of Busan, in which the exchange will apparently assist Busan in its blockchain development efforts with technology and infrastructure.

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