Whenever I hear people talk about crypto as the answer to Africa’s international remittances and payments problems, I usually laugh, and that reaction comes from familiarity rather than dismissal. I have spent enough time around payments, banking, and cross-border flows to know that enthusiasm often grows fastest where the real problem has not been fully understood.
Stablecoins and crypto works, and many of the people building in that space are smart and well-intentioned, but what they are addressing sits adjacent to the issue Africa keeps running into, not at the center of it. Yet the conversation keeps circling back to crypto as though speed and new tooling automatically translate into economic relief, and that assumption is where things start to fall apart.
I will explain why I see it this way, but I need to begin from a place that is personal, uncomfortable, and grounded in lived experience, because abstract arguments about systems and markets tend to miss the human context that shapes how I think about these things.
This is not cynicism but experience
Over the past few years, I have watched too many people I know battle cancer, including people I loved deeply and people who deserved far better endings than they got.Anyone who has been close to that kind of sickness understands one thing very quickly. Pain management and healing are not the same thing. Pain can be managed, sometimes so effectively that it almost disappears, while the illness itself continues its work beneath the surface. You can give someone morphine which will bring genuine relief, even dramatic relief, but it does nothing to remove the cancer. The comfort is real, and so is the damage still happening quietly in the background.
That is exactly how I listen to most conversations about crypto and stablecoins in cross border payments across Africa. There is relief in speed, convenience, and temporary workarounds, and that relief should not be dismissed or mocked. At the same time, the structural problem that created the pain in the first place remains firmly in place, and no amount of faster movement changes the fact that it has not been addressed.
International remittance problems are not only a technology problem
Countries trade with each other, and trade runs on currencies, which is the part most people already understand at a surface level. What tends to get glossed over is which currencies actually matter once you move beyond theory and into volume. The global system still runs primarily on the dollar, with the euro playing a strong supporting role in certain regions and corridors. China has spent years trying to position the Yuan as a global settlement currency, and despite the size of its economy and its growing influence, that effort remains ongoing and far from fully realised.
When a country exports goods or services, foreign currency flows in. When it imports, that currency flows out. At the national level, the country ends up acting as a single economic body representing the combined activity of its citizens, companies, and institutions in that exchange. This is why the balance of trade matters so much in practice. It is not an abstract economic concept reserved for textbooks or policy papers. Balance of trade determines whether an economy has room to breathe or is constantly operating under pressure.
When imports consistently outpace exports, especially over extended periods, foreign currency inevitably becomes scarce. That scarcity shows up everywhere, from restrictions and delays to volatility and policy interventions. No amount of clever routing, faster settlement, or new payment technology changes that underlying problem, because the constraint sits in how much value the country earns relative to how much it spends.
Why some currencies are locked down and others are allowed to roam
This is where many African and LATAM countries find themselves today. When export earnings remain weak and economies lean heavily on imports, governments tend to respond in the few ways available to them. Currency controls begin to appear in different forms, whether through pegs, spending limits, approval processes, or outright restrictions. These measures rarely come from malice or ignorance. They emerge because foreign exchange is limited, demand keeps rising, and policymakers are trying to ration what little is available across competing needs.
More productive economies tend to operate under very different conditions. When individuals and businesses are consistently selling goods and services to international customers at scale, governments have far less reason to intervene aggressively in currency flows. Oversight still exists, usually centred on KYC, AML, and compliance standards, but there is less anxiety about money moving in and out of the system. The underlying economic activity provides enough buffer for inflows and outflows to happen without triggering instability.
That gap between these two realities has very little to do with the technology used to move money around. It is shaped by how much value an economy creates, how much of that value is sold beyond its borders, and how reliably those earnings replenish the pool of foreign exchange over time.
Nigeria is a perfect, uncomfortable example
Nigeria illustrates this dynamic better than any theory ever could. For years, the country spent staggering amounts of foreign exchange importing refined petroleum, a dependency that quietly hollowed out reserves and distorted almost every part of the financial system. That pressure showed up in familiar ways, from tight dollar limits and card restrictions to an endless stream of circulars attempting to manage scarcity through policy. The strain was constant, and everyone in the system felt it.
When Dangote’s refinery finally came onstream, that single development began to shift the equation. The country stopped bleeding foreign exchange at the same scale, and the immediate pressure on dollar supply started to ease. Almost overnight, banks that had been vocal about controls found room to relax some of them. Monthly international spending limits moved from painfully zero to figures running into thousands of dollars, reflecting a change in underlying conditions rather than any sudden improvement in banking infrastructure.
The dollars did not appear out of thin air, and nothing magical happened behind the scenes. The difference came from reducing a massive and recurring drain on foreign exchange, which created space in the system and reminded everyone how closely currency stability is tied to what a country produces and pays for.
Where the dollars actually sit, and why that matters
Another detail that rarely gets said plainly is where international money actually lives in practice. When countries engage in global trade through imports and exports, the foreign currency earned does not sit in some abstract national vault. It sits as external reserves held with correspondent banks, usually large international institutions such as JP Morgan, CitiBank, and others operating at that level. These accounts form the practical storage of a country’s foreign exchange and are the same pools of money used to settle international payments, support trade finance, and meet cross border obligations. When exports are consistent and meaningful, those reserves are replenished and remain stable. When exports slow or fall short, the balances thin out, and every outward payment begins to carry more weight and scrutiny.
This is why external reserves matter far beyond headline numbers. They determine how much real liquidity a country has access to when settling international obligations. You can build the fastest payment application in the world and design systems that move value in milliseconds, but speed alone does not refill those correspondent accounts where reserves are held. If the balances underneath are running low, scale becomes impossible regardless of how efficient the front end looks. This is the part of the conversation that stablecoin advocates tend to skip past too quickly, even though it sits at the heart of how international money actually works.
Stablecoins are a bypass, not a cure
Stablecoins can bypass parts of the traditional financial system, and that bypass can be genuinely useful in the right context. At a basic level, a stablecoin is a digital token designed to maintain a one to one value with a fiat currency, most commonly the US dollar. Issuers claim this stability is achieved by holding reserves that mirror the value of the tokens in circulation.
In theory, every dollar-denominated stablecoin should be backed by actual dollar assets held somewhere in custody. This structure allows stablecoins to move quickly across borders while maintaining a familiar unit of account, which explains why they reduce friction, move faster than many legacy processes, and feel modern to users who have grown tired of delays and paperwork. At small to medium volumes, especially for freelancers, startups, and specific cross border use cases, they can solve real problems and deliver tangible value.
Once you look closely at how this backing is supposed to work, the picture becomes less comforting. Stablecoins are expected to be backed one hundred percent by real dollar assets, whether cash, short term treasuries, or similar instruments. Whether that backing exists in full, in real time, and under stress remains an open question.
The system only truly gets tested when something breaks, because redemption pressure is the moment when backing either proves itself or collapses. Until a major liquidity event forces large scale redemptions, confidence rests largely on disclosures, attestations, and trust in the issuer rather than direct verification.
Money also has to move into and out of stablecoins through ramps, and those ramps matter more than most people admit. To mint a stablecoin, someone has to deposit actual dollars through a bank or payment provider. To exit, the process reverses, with the issuer paying out dollars from its reserves. These on and off ramps remain tightly coupled to the traditional banking system, correspondent accounts, and regulatory oversight.
At a national level, adoption runs into the same constraint almost immediately. If a country does not earn enough foreign exchange and a large share of participants begin moving value outward through stablecoins, the imbalance becomes visible very quickly. Money leaves faster than it comes in, and the question that surfaces is unavoidable. Where are the dollars backing this activity supposed to originate from? Technology offers no answer to that problem, because it sits firmly in the domain of economics.
Speed is impressive but settlement is everything
I am not dismissing technology or innovation. I have benefited directly from how efficient modern payment systems can be when the foundations are in place. I remember being in Portugal and trying to pay for garri and egusi when my card refused to work and the ATM was uncooperative.
I had to transfer money from my UK account to the seller’s Portuguese account, and the funds arrived instantly, without drama or delay. Who knows, if the transaction hadn’t gone through as quickly as it did, I’d have had to compensate by washing as many dishes as my meal had cost.
That experience felt seamless because settlement already existed behind the scenes. The liquidity was present, the correspondent relationships were intact, and the systems trusted each other. Speed came at the end of the chain, not at the beginning. This is where people often confuse switches with substance. Moving money quickly looks impressive, but having money available to move remains the harder and more consequential problem.
Why crypto breaks under real volume
There is another uncomfortable reality that rarely gets enough attention. The largest importers in most African countries operate in heavily regulated environments. Car importers, manufacturers, and large distributors sit squarely within formal systems that are monitored closely by regulators. They cannot simply decide to reroute billions in settlements through crypto without running straight into legal and compliance barriers. In many jurisdictions, the law around crypto remains unclear or openly restrictive, which limits how far these guys can go.
If those same actors attempted to push their full transaction volumes through crypto without strong underlying trade inflows to support them, the system would come under stress almost immediately. The liquidity required to sustain that level of activity is not there, and the backing needed to absorb those flows simply does not exist. The model holds together at the margins, but once real volume enters the picture, the limits become impossible to ignore.
Wishing people well, without confusing the problem
I genuinely wish crypto builders well, just as I wish policymakers well and hope that every country working to improve its economic situation succeeds. None of what I am saying comes from bitterness, fear of change, or a desire to hold on to old systems for their own sake. Innovation matters, experimentation matters, and progress almost always comes from people trying new things in imperfect conditions.
At the same time, we have to be honest with ourselves about what we are actually fixing. There is a difference between easing discomfort and addressing the source of the pain, and that distinction matters when the stakes involve entire economies rather than individual transactions. Faster movement, cleaner interfaces, and clever workarounds can offer relief, sometimes meaningful relief, but they do not alter the fundamentals that created the pressure in the first place.
Crypto can move money faster, reduce friction, and make life easier for certain users operating at specific scales. What it does not change is a broken balance of trade, weak export capacity, or decades of structural economic decisions that continue to shape currency availability. Until those deeper issues shift, every new solution, no matter how elegant it appears, will eventually run into the same limits. And when that happens, we should not pretend to be surprised.
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