One man's plan to orange pill a nation: Bitcoin Senegal

cointelegraph.com:

Nourou is a 29 year old Bitcoiner with a vision for his home country. A former financial analyst for a French Bank, he founded Bitcoin Senegal in late 2021.

Following an eight-year stint in France, during which Nourou earned his Masters degree, Bitcoin Chaincode qualifications, and a deep understanding of legacy financial markets thanks to work in investment finance, he was primed to orange-pill Senegal.

He returned to his home country disheartened to learn that Coinmap (a website showing Bitcoin vendors and merchants around the world), had zero locations in Senegal. That’s despite singer and influencer Akon’s plans to set up a crypto-style Akon City.

Passionate about Bitcoin and equipped with the knowledge that a “Bitcoin Beach” idea in El Salvador eventually lead to the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, the 29-year-old was inspired to try a similar thing in his hometown. 

Since setting foot in Africa’s westernmost capital, Dakar, Nourou has made progress. As well as founding Bitcoin Senegal, he's given upwards of 18 educational talks about Bitcoin, and orange-pilled two restaurants, one games shop, a surf camp and a few local vendors. That’s all in the space of about six weeks.

He has his sights set on 20 restaurants to accept Bitcoin by July 2022, right before he finishes coding up Senegal’s first proprietary Bitcoin exchange from scratch. The exchange would compete with Binance (which has an impressive footprint in Africa), Paxful, as well a friend's cryptocurrency exchange which uses an off-the-shelf, third-party solution.

Nourou told Cointelegraph that his exchange will be as decentralized as possible, and knows that while competition may be tough:

Indeed, while the Sub-Saharan country of about 17 million