Archive · Crypto & digital assets
All 22 archive entries filed under crypto & digital assets, most recent first.
Rwanda's Law No.
The Central Bank of Kenya advertised senior and managerial roles for virtual asset licensing and compliance functions in late April 2026, with applications closing 18 May, before the VASP Regulations had been finalised. The hiring confirms the division of labour under Kenya's dual-regulator model: the CBK covers payment-side VASPs, stablecoin issuers and custodial services, while the CMA supervises exchanges, brokers and tokenisation platforms.
The National Treasury published the Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations 2026 for public comment in April 2026, replacing the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961 and bringing crypto assets formally within South Africa's capital flow framework for the first time.
The FSCA published a supervisory update on crypto asset service provider licensing on 15 April 2026, reporting 30 supervisory inspections of CASPs conducted between April 2025 and March 2026 under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act.
SEC Nigeria issued a rules exposure draft on 14 April 2026 setting a minimum paid-up share capital of N7.5 billion for Free Trade Zone Entities seeking to offer or issue shares on the Nigerian capital market, with a two-week comment window through the Rules Committee. Nigeria's free trade zones host technology, digital payments and blockchain infrastructure operators, and a N7.5 billion capital floor for public market access determines which of them can raise capital domestically and which must structure offshore.
Public participation on the Draft Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations 2026 closed on 10 April 2026, keeping Kenya on track to operationalise VASP licensing in 2026.
South Africa's National Treasury confirmed it will amend the Exchange Control Regulations to govern transfers of cryptocurrency to non-residents, according to an April 2026 analysis published on Polity.
Africoin, a Rwanda-headquartered platform tokenising real-world assets, including cocoa, coffee, gold, silver and verified carbon credits, on Ethereum, was admitted to Ghana's SEC Virtual Asset Sandbox on 8 April 2026, among the first participants under the VASP Act 2025 (Act 1154).
The Central Bank of Nigeria granted Flutterwave a national microfinance banking licence in early April 2026, clearing one of Africa's largest payments processors to take deposits, lend and run accounts, with its SendApp remittance product, which has over one million users, as the consumer foundation. The licence is one data point in a deliberate CBN consolidation: Paystack acquired Ladder Microfinance Bank in January 2026, and OPay and Moniepoint were upgraded to national banking licences before that.
Ripple published research on 6 April 2026 identifying eight African nations advancing crypto regulation, placing South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya in the lead, with Ghana introducing initial compliance measures and Botswana, Namibia, Seychelles and Ethiopia at earlier stages.
The Central Bank of Nigeria inaugurated a Payments Service Providers Committee in Lagos on 2 April 2026, seating the CBN, commercial banks, mobile money operators and fintechs at one table, with a new Payments System Vision promised within a month. The scale being governed is considerable: Nigeria's digital payments system processed 11.2 billion transactions worth over one quadrillion naira in 2024.
The National Treasury published the Draft Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations 2026 for public consultation on 17 March 2026, the first implementing instrument under the VASP Act 2025. Developed with the CBK and CMA through a multi-agency task force and accompanied by a Regulatory Impact Statement, the draft sets out licensing and authorisation processes for all VASP categories, from exchanges to custodial wallets to payment processors, and incorporates FATF Recommendation 15 and Travel Rule requirements.
CMA Rwanda set out a regulatory approach to the tokenisation of financial assets, presented at the Inclusive FinTech Forum in Kigali in early 2026: securities tokenisation, real-world asset tokenisation and tokenised funds, treated under the existing Capital Markets Act rather than a new statute. Formal tokenisation guidelines had not been published as at our coverage date.
On 1 March 2026, the National Bank of Ethiopia declared all birr-paired peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions illegal unless explicitly authorised, citing foreign exchange manipulation, fraud and the absence of anti-money laundering safeguards. The prohibition is drawn narrowly to birr-paired peer-to-peer transactions rather than digital assets generally, and authorisation is expressly contemplated: the NBE confirmed it is developing a comprehensive digital asset framework in consultation with global peer regulators. The ban follows Ethiopia's July 2024 reform programme and a roughly 200% birr devaluation, during which the NBE has been closing currency arbitrage channels, peer-to-peer crypto trading among them.
At the end of February 2026, the BCEAO circulated a questionnaire to fintech operators across the eight-state UEMOA zone on possible uses of cryptocurrencies in the regional financial system, reported by Jeune Afrique on 9 March. It is the central bank's first known crypto survey after years of restrictive silence.
The FSCA imposed a R710,000 administrative penalty on QuickTrade (Pty) Ltd, an online CFD and forex broker, for multiple breaches of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, including customer due diligence and anti-money laundering control failures, and coupled the fine with a remediation directive. The action forms part of the FSCA's continuing anti-money laundering sweep of retail trading platforms.
SEC Nigeria revoked the registration of Kensington Agro Trading Limited as a capital market operator, with immediate effect, in a circular signed 9 February 2026 and published 2 March, acting under section 61(6) of the Investments and Securities Act 2025 and Rule 34(1) of the SEC Rules.
On 30 January 2026, SEC Nigeria issued a public warning against Aurum Bot, an online platform soliciting cryptocurrency investments from Nigerian retail investors without registration or a licence.
SEC Nigeria's second public warning of 30 January 2026 named ModMount Services Limited, a CFD broker offering forex, stocks, indices, commodities and cryptocurrency to Nigerian investors, as unlicensed and suspected of fraudulent activity. Unlike a plain scam, ModMount presents as a legitimate international broker giving Nigerians access to global markets, with offshore licensing claims standing in for local authorisation.
Ghana's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act passed Parliament on 19 December 2025 and received presidential assent on 30 December, the third African market to pass major crypto-relevant legislation in 2025, after Nigeria's Investments and Securities Act 2025, which brought digital assets within securities regulation, and Kenya's standalone VASP Act 2025. The Bank of Ghana and SEC Ghana share the regulatory mandate under the Act, all virtual asset service providers must be licensed, and the law extends to Ghana's large informal crypto market.
Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act 2025 was assented on 15 October 2025 and came into force on 4 November 2025, making Kenya one of East Africa's first jurisdictions with a standalone virtual asset statute. Supervision under the Act splits between the CBK, which covers issuance and custodial services, and the CMA, which covers exchanges, brokers and trading platforms.
The FATF removed South Africa from its grey list on 24 October 2025, ending a multi-year remediation of the country's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime, coordinated across the Treasury, SARB, FIC and FSCA. For the continent's largest financial services hub and crypto asset market, delisting removed a stigma that had weighed on institutional participation and VASP licensing decisions.
Enforcement decisions, new laws and regulatory movement across African jurisdictions, in one brief. Free, and built to be forwarded to the colleague who needs it.
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