Mayowa Joy David and Atta Addo’s 2025 study offers one of the first empirical examinations of cryptocurrency use for cross-border trade in the African context, a significant gap that researchers have flagged for years but rarely filled. Its value lies in going into the field rather than adding to an already crowded body of conceptual work.
Focusing on Lagos’s Computer Village — an electronics hub hosting more than 5,000 informal MSMEs — the paper applies actor-network theory (ANT) and qualitative interviews to trace how Nigerian importers pay Chinese suppliers through broker-mediated crypto arrangements. The findings challenge one of ICT4D scholarship’s foundation assumptions—that developing countries lag in technology adoption due to poor infrastructure, low digital literacy, and distrust of online transactions. Countries such as Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya are not lagging in this technology; they are instead leading it.
The network the study uncovers is more layered than the adoption numbers alone suggest. Merchant use of crypto is often indirect. Many retailers rely on brokers to handle wallets, secure liquidity, and execute settlements. In practice, Naira flows to brokers, who acquire USDT through OTC exchanges, route via mediators to Chinese crypto traders, who convert into RMB and pay suppliers directly. The supplier never holds cryptocurrency. This arrangement delivers faster, cheaper cross-border settlement than formal banking has managed in this corridor. Adoption is therefore being driven by brokers who identified an opportunity, established trust, absorbed early losses, and built the infrastructure layer that makes broader retail participation viable.
The study also underscores the role of non-human actors in sustaining this system. Stablecoins, mobile wallets, escrow systems, and peer-to-peer platforms help stabilize transactions and, in practice, determine who can participate in the network. Adoption here emerges from the alignment between human coordination and material infrastructure rather than from technological properties alone.
The policy recommendations remain high-level, and evidence on transaction failures, non-adopters, and variation across trade corridors is limited. Questions of scale and durability under tighter regulatory or liquidity conditions remain open.
These limitations do not diminish what this paper establishes. For researchers and institutions working on Bitcoin adoption in Africa, this study provides rare field-level evidence of how informal crypto payment infrastructure actually works. At a moment when regulators, and development institutions are all forming views about crypto’s role in African trade, the questions that matter most are not abstract ones about technological potential, but should be aimed at understanding who builds these networks, how trust is constructed, and why adoption spreads even without institutional backing.
For further reading:
David, M. J., & Addo, A. A. (2025). Cryptocurrency use for cross-border payments: Understanding the popularity of crypto among Nigerians importing from China. Information Technology & People. Available at: Open access version
