Nigeria moves gingerly to tame Africa’s biggest crypto market
Nigerian authorities are warily moving to regulate Africa’s largest crypto market in long-delayed efforts to create legal certainty in a field still fraught with fraud and volatility.
For years, regulators and government officials have viewed cryptocurrencies and other digital assets with suspicion despite their popularity in the country.
Nigeria ranked second globally after India in 2023 and 2024 on a crypto adoption index compiled by Chainalysis, a global crypto research firm.
Over the past year, a more regulated sector has slowly started to take shape, even as fraud remains a concern for police.
The director-general of the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Emomotimi Agama, confirmed to AFP in August that the regulator was pushing ahead with efforts to create clarity around the use of digital assets.
That month, the SEC announced that it had granted “Approval-in-Principle” to two exchanges to begin operations. The first licensed companies — Busha Digital Limited and Quidax Technologies Limited — have since launched.
“We believe this regulatory move is a positive start that will benefit the market in the long run by building trust and stability,” Buchi Okoro, co-founder and chief executive of Quidax, told AFP.
“The SEC approval sent a clear signal to potential crypto investors, emphasising their focus on customer protection.”
However, the government’s regulatory push is being bogged down by scepticism and widespread fraud and investment scams, with many grifters in play.
In December, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it arrested 792 suspects — including scores of foreigners — in a single operation in the affluent Victoria Island area of Lagos “for their alleged involvement in
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