Will Facebook’s digital money Libra be good for Africa?

From early next year, Facebook intends to let its two billion-odd users – more than 139 million of whom are in Africa – make digital payments through its apps and popular messaging service WhatsApp using a new crypto-currency called Libra.

It could have for a continent which receives a huge amount of remittances – and is one of the least-banked regions of the world, something allowed for other innovations like mobile cash payments to take Africa.

From BBC.

As a Zimbabwean living in South Africa, I have become numb to the daylight robbery that ensues whenever I receive money from abroad or send cash to my family back home.

As such, like many other cautious pragmatists, I relish the prospect of a network like Libra permanently disrupting the lucrative cash remittance businesses of large banks and money transfer services like Western Union and MoneyGram.

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According to a World Bank report published last year, the cost of sending cash in sub-Saharan Africa was at least 20% higher than any other region in the world. The report revealed that sending $200 to and from the region in the first quarter of 2018 cost a whopping $19.

But we must not to the myriad factors responsible for maintaining and actively engineering economic complexities like Western Union exploit to great effect.

Read more at BBC.