Changepeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, just met the president of the Central African Republic (CAR) Faustin-Archange Touadéra.
The president posted a picture of himself and CZ on Twitter and made the following statement:
In the second part of the Tweet Touadéra mentioned that he discussed the following topics with the Binance CEO:
“Education, investments, crypto adoption in the Central African Republic and the region and the Sang project vision, were some of the topics of the meeting.”
The Central African Republic (CAR) recently made headlines as the second nation state to adopt bitcoin as legal tender following El Salvador.
Although the announcement didn’t get as much attention as when El Salvador adopted bitcoin as legal tender, the Central African Republic’s decision is significant in the context of colonialism. The Central African Republic is part of six countries that use the Central African CFA franc.
The CFA franc is a relic of France’s African colonies. Although France doesn’t have any colonies anymore, it maintains a sort of “financial colonialism” through the use of the CFA franc that makes its former colonies heavily dependent on France, the Bank of France and the European Central Bank (ECB).
CFA originally stood for “franc of the French Colonies of Africa”. Alex Gladstein points out in his book “Check Your Financial Privilege” how many former African colonies are still struggling to gain independence due to the intricate monetary relationship they maintain with their former colonial master.
According to Gladstein there is a history of former French colonies trying to break their financial ties with France and replacing the CFA with their own government-issued currency.
Not surprisingly, many African leaders that stood up against French colonialism or the monetary ties created by the CFA franc faced pushback by their former colonial master, with some unconfirmed reports even claiming that France has been involved in the assassinations of 22 African presidents since 1963.
The CFA franc has a fixed exchange rate to the former French franc. In the past, 100 CFA francs used to equal 1 former French franc. Today, this is equivalent to 0.152449 euro.
The CFA is backed and controlled by the Bank of France, which makes all 12 African countries that use the currency heavily dependent on France.
The Central African Republic is one of six former French colonies that use the Central African CFA franc.
The recent actions by Touadéra to make bitcoin legal tender in the Central African Republic is significant because it is a step towards independence from the leftover financial colonialism and dependence on France.
With bitcoin being legal tender, the Central African Republic doesn’t have to be subject to monetary policies and decisions made by the Bank of France of ECB. If other former French colonies were to make bitcoin legal tender as well, this could be seen as a sort of post-colonial monetary revolution.
However, the Central African Republic also stirred up some mixed feelings in the bitcoin community when it announced it’s Sango Project. It consists of the Sango Coin token, launched and advertised by the Central African Republic’s government, which is fractionally-backed by bitcoin.
Some call Sango the first e-governance Bitcoin layer 2 solution, essentially operating as a sidechain of bitcoin. The actions raised eyebrows among critical voices in the bitcoin community who called Sango Coin the equivalent of a government launching its own “shitcoin”.
If there is bitcoin and the Lightning Network, why launch a national token that is only fractionally-backed by bitcoin when you can just using bitcoin itself as currency? This is the question some are asking in the bitcoin space.
CZ’s meeting with Touadéra was related to the Sango Project as well as other topics, but the specifics of what was discussed are unknown.
