The Central Bank of Nigeria plans to unveil Nigeria’s digital currency. Yes, the e-Naira is coming next year. I am looking for startups which are thinking ahead of this new market, and ready to build a product for that future. While we do not know fully what it would look like, one thing I know is this: there would be new or updated payment gateways and possibly Nigeria will have nodes for “agents” at different levels of market stacks, from commercial banks to mama put and akara sellers. This is a cambrian-level opportunity and it looks promising.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has revealed that Nigeria will launch a digital currency. With this, Nigeria tracks other nations which plan or have launched digital currencies. China is expected to roll out the e-yuan, its digital currency, at scale, later in the year. The United States has also started work on e-dollars.
Next month, Tekedia Mini-MBA LIVE is converging a session to be anchored by Dubai-based Bitfxt (crypto exchange) and BoundlessPay (crypto payment) on Digital Currencies: E-Yuan, E-Dollars, and E-Naira. We do expect to learn a lot about this evolving market and how businesses and entrepreneurs could prepare for that future. Yes, I want to make sure people can pay for Tekedia Mini-MBA with e-Naira once it goes live.
At Tekedia Capital, this is an area we hope to invest if indeed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decentralizes the distribution of the e-Naira to the extent that our phones, portals, etc become our banks, and our bank accounts are now ‘warehoused” in the CBN, at least up to a level.
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If you have a compelling vision with a roadmap of that future, I will personally write a cheque once CBN shares guidelines on the protocol. More so, we would like to invite you to this exclusive conversation for the Tekedia community. Indicate your interest by commenting below.
The race to Fintech 2.0 in Nigeria is beginning next year. Are you ready? Who builds the first e-naira compatible API?
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Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (June 9 – Sept 6, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
I think any smart person good with developing should just go as search how the Chinese are building platform around the E Yuan and replicate.
Good luck to the Team, and please don’t relent in signing those cheques they work wonders
super interested prof!
I won’t be surprised to see the CBN announce that there will be an hold after 2 months of the roll out. Copy copy misled national bank.
Hmmmm. Opportunity abounds for this innovation. Let’s watch and see.