The Africa Digital-Asset Policy Watch tracks key regulatory shifts and projects shaping the continent’s digital-finance landscape. Rather than covering a fixed quarter, it consolidates current and unfolding stories, from new licensing frameworks and tax reforms to tokenization pilots and mining governance debates. This edition focuses on six jurisdictions namely Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Ethiopia, where governments are advancing from pilot experiments to formal rulemaking.

Since the emergence of Bitcoin as the first and most transformative use case of decentralized ledger technology, regulators have grappled with how far oversight should extend. Designed to grant users full monetary autonomy, the technology challenges traditional financial systems. Yet as adoption grows, intermediaries have naturally emerged to simplify access and storage, creating natural points for regulatory oversight.

These include centralized exchanges and custodial service providers, collectively classified as Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) under emerging frameworks. Mining and related infrastructure, including power use and hardware imports, tie digital activity to the real economy and attract oversight through energy, trade, and tax policy.

Across Africa, the policy focus is shifting from whether to regulate to how to govern innovation while maintaining consumer protection, financial stability, and technological freedom.

Reporting is grounded in official sources, including central-bank circulars, fiscal acts, and legislative records. Where unavailable, verified secondary sources are used to ensure timely, accurate, and policy-relevant analysis. The analysis is further informed by stakeholder engagement rounds conducted across the Africa Bitcoin ecosystem, including conversations with community builders, circular-economy innovators, product developers, and educators.

Country Analyses

Uganda: Ambitious Token Launches Amid Regulatory Uncertainty

Uganda’s crypto sector remains largely unregulated, with oversight extending only to virtual-asset service providers. Recently it recently made headlines when a private initiative by the Global Settlement Network (GSN) and Diacente Group announced plans to create digital tokens representing up to USD 5.5 billion worth of assets linked to the Karamoja Industrial and Special Economic Zone, including proposals for a “digital shilling” and tokenized government securities.

At the time of reporting, no public confirmation or regulatory endorsement from the Bank of Uganda or Ministry of Finance had been issued. The gap between public marketing and regulatory verification highlights the risk of treating unaudited tokenization claims as credible instruments.

Projects of this magnitude require clear disclosure standards and regulatory validation to ensure monetary and financial integrity. Without such oversight, there is a risk that large-scale private tokenization claims may be misconstrued as official initiatives, complicating market expectations and investor confidence.

The episode underscores the distinction between open, verifiable systems such as Bitcoin and private tokenization ventures that depend on unverified claims of asset backing. While Bitcoin’s transparency limits opportunities for misrepresentation, centralized tokenization projects risk undermining confidence if marketed without regulatory validation.

South Africa: Institutionalization, Retail rails, and Bitcoin on The Balance sheet

South Africa remains the continent’s benchmark for structured oversight, having progressed from regulatory design to active implementation. Its framework now integrates consumer access, institutional products, and fiscal oversight, a rare combination among emerging markets.

On the retail side, crypto payments are now available at over 650,000 merchants through Scan-to-Pay networks. Institutionally, the country has listed Africa’s first regulated Bitcoin ETF, seen a public company adopt a corporate Bitcoin treasury, and hosted Ripple’s partnership with Absa Bank to provide institutional-grade digital-asset custody—its first in Africa. 

These developments unfold within a maturing regulatory environment. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) now classifies crypto-assets as financial products, and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is implementing the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) to enhance transparency and tax reporting. Beyond regulatory agencies, the courts are also shaping the policy landscape via Standard Bank v South African Reserve Bank & Others: a landmark case testing how crypto assets should be defined in law, and what level of oversight the central bank can exercise. The question before the court is whether cryptocurrencies count as “capital,” “money,” or “foreign currency” under South Africa’s long-standing exchange control rules.

An earlier High Court ruling said they do not, which would limit the Reserve Bank’s authority over cross-border crypto transactions, but that decision is now under appeal. If the Reserve Bank’s view is upheld, crypto-assets will remain under exchange-control supervision; if overturned, cross-border transfers could fall outside current monetary oversight—potentially reshaping how Africa’s most advanced market governs digital-asset flows.

Together, these developments position South Africa as both a leader and a testing ground for digital-asset governance on the continent. Insights from stakeholder consultations indicate that merchant use of crypto payments remains very limited despite extensive infrastructure.

This suggests readiness, an ecosystem waiting for demand to meet capacity. South Africa’s approach, defined by regulatory clarity, institutional participation, and consistent engagement with industry, reflects an inclusive policy posture that balances innovation with prudence.

Nigeria: Toward Coordinated Digital-Finance Governance

Nigeria’s digital-asset policy framework is consolidating under clearer authority. The Investment and Securities Act (ISA) 2025 designate the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as the sole regulator for virtual assets and classifies all digital assets as securities, ending years of fragmented oversight.

Complementing this, the Nigeria Tax Administration Act (NTAA) 2025 (effective 1 January 2026) introduces a structured division of regulatory responsibility. Under Section 79, the President must designate a lead agency for the supervision of virtual assets as defined in the Fifth Schedule. Until that designation takes effect, the SEC retains jurisdiction over all digital and virtual assets treated as securities.

The House of Representatives and the joint CBN–Finance Ministry working group have revived policy coordination through newly established committees on cryptocurrency and stablecoins. They are currently reviewing the SEC’s earlier proposal of a ₦500 million to ₦1 billion capital requirement for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), following market feedback that such thresholds could marginalize smaller operators. The Presidential Committee on Tax Reforms reaffirmed that digital-asset income remains taxable under existing law, with no new levies introduced.

Against this backdrop of regulatory consolidation, market confidence remains high. Blockchain.com has selected Nigeria as its African hub, and a 2025 Bitget survey shows that 75% of Nigerian users plan to increase crypto investment. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is finalizing a renewable “prosumer” framework that could indirectly shape Bitcoin mining by expanding access to decentralized, grid-fed energy systems.

This combination of regulatory clarity and market enthusiasm suggest Nigeria is positioning itself as a digital asset hub. Yet verifiable available data as well as outreach to stakeholders and market participants on ground reveals significant gaps between policy ambition and ground-level adoption.

Only seven firms are currently listed as compliant on the SEC registry. While it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions, this limited uptake may reflect a mix of factors such as high entry costs, limited incentives, and lingering mistrust among operators. Stakeholder sentiment toward the SEC’s classification of all digital assets as securities remains mixed.

While legally consistent with local statutes, it drew criticism because Bitcoin lacks the defining features of a security—no central issuer, ownership claim, or expectation of profit. The lingering fallout from the Binance incident, in which two company executives were detained in early 2024 amid government claims of currency manipulation reinforced perceptions of regulatory hostility and left many operators unwilling to engage regulators at all.

Nigeria’s trajectory will hinge on whether regulatory clarity can build trust and reflect actual market conditions. Regulatory statements and posture remain out of step with practice, leaving participation low and uncertainty high until policies are consistently applied and enforced. Yet the incoming NTAA presents a narrow but important opening that, if effectively interpreted, its provisions leave room for interpreting certain digital assets (particularly Bitcoin) as operating outside the traditional bounds of securities.

With sustained advocacy and informed technical engagement, this opening could allow Nigerian Bitcoin stakeholders to help shape a more coherent and adaptive classification framework. The implications are significant for prospective Bitcoin treasuries, where clear asset categorization will determine how holdings are reported, taxed, and supervised.

Kenya: Legislative Breakthrough

Kenya has transitioned from a high-participation, low-regulation market to one of Africa’s most structured digital-asset jurisdictions. The Virtual-Asset Service Providers Act 2025, now signed into law, establishes licensing, compliance, and disclosure obligations for exchanges and custodians. The Finance Act 2025 replaced the 3% digital-asset value tax with a 10% duty on platform fees, complementing the 1.5% Digital-Assets Tax (DAT) introduced in 2023.

By taxing platforms instead of the asset itself, regulators aim to capture economic value while formalizing oversight. Yet, this may gradually steer Bitcoin away from its peer-to-peer roots that once defined Kenya’s crypto resilience toward a more regulated, institution-driven ecosystem — a shift reinforced by parallel effort to align with international compliance standards.

Following IMF technical consultations in early 2025, Kenya aligned its framework with global AML/CFT standards, which are typically aimed at “protecting financial integrity and preventing illicit flows”, and generally require strict customer identification, transaction monitoring, and reporting obligations in line with FATF recommendations.

Together, these shifts in taxation, legislation, and institutional guidance position Kenya as a model for East Africa’s policy convergence, demonstrating how fiscal inclusion can develop alongside regulatory certainty. Its digital-asset environment exhibits a level of organization and strategic oversight comparable to that of South Africa.

Ghana: Structured Roadmap to Regulation

The Bank of Ghana, working with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Intelligence Centre, announced completion of the draft Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) Bill and a target of December 2025 for passage. The draft reflects extensive stakeholder input and regulatory alignment.

The framework requires VASP registration, introduces a national compliance portal, and outlines a phased roadmap with stakeholder consultations and awareness campaigns. Ghana’s measured, collaborative approach demonstrates how regulatory readiness can coexist with innovation, setting a West African precedent for coordinated digital asset governance.

Ethiopia: Mining under Quiet Oversight

Ethiopia’s regulatory environment is quietly shifting from paradox to pattern. It is shaping governance through subtle instruments of administrative control, fiscal levers, and energy pricing rather than formal regulation.

In June 2025, the Ethiopian Energy Authority (EEA) and Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP), in partnership with Denmark’s EA Energy Analyses, released the Ethiopian Energy Outlook 2025, warning that data-center and crypto-mining demand could exceed 8 TWh, (about 30% of national use). In response, EEP temporarily halted new power permits to reassess grid capacity.

By October 2025, the Ethiopian Electric Utility announced a nationwide electricity tariff revision as part of its multi-year power-sector reform. Later in the month, a follow-up letter titled “Notification of New Electricity Tariff for Data Mining Customers,” signed by the Director of Energy Trading and Marketing at EEP, introduced specific rate changes for mining operations.

Mining activity is expected to continue expanding, with Ethiopia projected to remain among the fastest-growing contributors to global Bitcoin hash power, even in the absence of an explicit fiscal or policy framework. With the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) generating more than 5,000 MW, Ethiopia’s energy surplus gives it a structural advantage in mining.

Still, the tariff revisions signal a subtler regulatory evolution: one emerging not from statute but from state-directed utility policy. Regulation, though unwritten, can already be felt in the margins, shaping behavior through pricing rather than law.

Ethiopia’s case illustrates how a state can quietly govern an unregulated industry, benefiting from its output while defining its limits through implicit control, a practice that is not novel, with precedents in other jurisdictions and across Africa.

Cross-Regional Signals

Three structural shifts are reshaping Africa’s digital-asset landscape:

1. Uneven Regulatory Formalization: Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria are moving toward clearer oversight structures, attracting institutional engagement and fiscal alignment. These jurisdictions are building licensing framework, compliance portals and inter-agency coordination mechanisms. In contrast, Uganda and Ethiopia remain lightly supervised, where informal activity continues to shape early-stage markets. This divergence points that African digital asset governance will remain fragmented for the near term, with regulated hubs coexisting alongside lightly governed jurisdictions.
2. Taxation and Fiscal Integration: Nigeria’s forthcoming January 2026 tax regime and South Africa’s adoption of the OECD CARF indicate that digital assets are being absorbed into national reporting systems—an important step toward transparency, though one that may raise compliance costs for smaller actors. Government are seeing Digital assets as revenue source worth formalizing than risks to be contained.
3. Institutional Collaboration: Cooperation among regulators is emerging as a key feature. Nigeria’s coordination among the CBN, SEC, and Finance Ministry, and South Africa’s FSCA–SARS partnership, suggest that effective governance may depend less on new laws and more on sustained inter-agency dialogue.

Together, these signals portray a continent methodically institutionalizing digital-asset governance rather than improvising it. Yet they also reveal a structural reality that regulatory fragmentation remains the continent’s defining feature. What is emerging is not uniform progress but a spectrum of adaptation, where innovation still moves faster than policy.

Final Reflections: Building from Within

As Africa moves to formalize digital-asset regulation, the core challenge lies in accurate asset categorization. Digital assets differ in design and purpose and treating them uniformly risks regulatory misalignment. In short, Bitcoin functions as a decentralized monetary commodity with a fixed supply and no issuer.

“Crypto” more broadly refers to token-based systems built on proprietary networks with varying levels of centralization, while stablecoins represent tokenized fiat currencies backed by reserves and managed by identifiable issuers. Sound regulation begins by recognizing these distinctions.

Nigeria’s decision to classify all digital assets as securities is a first step toward regulatory coherence but also reveals a clear gap in understanding. The NTAA, (effective January 2026), leaves room for assets that operate differently from traditional securities.

This gives Bitcoin advocates a chance to work with regulators to show why it fits better as a digital commodity. Kenya’s VASP Act takes a similar approach, allowing the Treasury Secretary to add new rules as the market develops. Together, they show Africa’s shift from broad restrictions to more precise regulation that will depend on open dialogue and local expertise.

Platforms such as Machankura, Bitnob, and Tando are producing advanced Bitcoin and fintech products, while initiatives like Btrust Builders are developing a pipeline of advanced open-source developers, and Africa Free Routing continues to expand Lightning Network education across the continent. These communities form the continent’s innovation base and should be involved in shaping future regulation.

Evidence shows that the IMF and other global institutions continue to shape how African governments frame digital-asset policies, often under the banner of compliance. Yet while these standards claim universality, their consequences are felt locally. Africa’s economies face conditions that decentralized systems are uniquely equipped to address.

What is needed now is alignment between innovation and governance, guided by local knowledge rather than external prescriptions. Mistrust still lingers, political in Nigeria and marked by cultural hesitance in southern Africa. It has created silence where collaboration should lead. Africa’s digital-asset future will belong to those who engage deliberately, informed and ready to define it on their own terms.