Fifteen years ago, sending money across African borders was a frustrating, expensive process. Remittances could take days to arrive, with fees swallowing a painful portion of the transfer. Then came mobile money—a revolution born not in Silicon Valley, but in the streets and markets of Nairobi.

With M-Pesa’s launch in 2007, the idea that you could send money through your phone without a bank account transformed how Africans transacted. Today, mobile money is the backbone of everyday commerce in countries from Kenya to Ghana, enabling millions to pay school fees, buy groceries, and run small businesses with nothing more than a basic handset.

Mobile money works because it solved a local problem in a local way. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, banks were distant and expensive, but mobile phone adoption was soaring. Services like M-Pesa in Kenya, MTN Mobile Money in Ghana, and Airtel Money in Uganda allowed people to store value digitally and transfer it instantly. By 2023, Africa accounted for 70% of the world’s $1.26 trillion in mobile money transactions, according to the GSMA. This wasn’t just a fintech success story—it was financial inclusion in action. But as powerful as it is, mobile money has limitations. Sending money between different providers or countries often remains costly and slow. Every transaction passes through telecom companies and regulators, creating bottlenecks and points of failure. And mobile money wallets aren’t designed for cross-border investments, decentralized lending, or peer-to-peer global trade.

This is where Web3 enters the conversation. Web3 is the catch-all term for the next iteration of the internet—one built on blockchain technology, decentralization, and user ownership. At its core, Web3 enables people to send, store, and trade value directly, without relying on centralized intermediaries like banks or telecom companies.

In financial terms, Web3 manifests as decentralized finance, or DeFi—lending, borrowing, saving, and trading carried out through smart contracts on public blockchains. Assets can include cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, stablecoins pegged to fiat currencies, and even tokenized versions of commodities and stocks. For Africa, this opens possibilities beyond mobile money’s scope: instant cross-border payments without high remittance fees, global earning opportunities such as payments for freelance work in stablecoins, and access to decentralized lending that isn’t tied to local credit histories or banks. Imagine a trader in Lagos paying a supplier in Accra in seconds, using a stablecoin pegged to the dollar—no bank queues, no FX delays, no telecom fees.

Africa has a track record of leapfrogging—skipping over legacy infrastructure to adopt cutting-edge tech. Just as mobile phones bypassed landlines and mobile money bypassed traditional banking, Web3 could leapfrog some of mobile money’s constraints. Several factors make Africa fertile ground for Web3 adoption: high mobile penetration, a youthful and tech-savvy population, a cross-border trade culture that demands fast and flexible payment systems, and economic instability in some regions that pushes people toward stable digital assets. Countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa are already in the global top 20 for cryptocurrency adoption, according to Chainalysis’ 2024 report. Startups like Yellow Card, a pan-African crypto exchange, and Kotani Pay, which connects blockchain payments to mobile money wallets, are bridging the gap between old and new systems.

Still, Web3’s promise isn’t without challenges. Many African governments are cautious about cryptocurrencies, with some imposing bans or strict licensing rules. While stablecoins can reduce volatility, much of the crypto market remains unpredictable. Blockchain transactions require internet access, and not all rural areas are well connected. And perhaps most critically, understanding how to use Web3 safely takes time, and scams remain a major concern. These hurdles mean Web3 isn’t replacing mobile money tomorrow—rather, it’s likely to coexist and integrate with it in hybrid models for years to come.

The most realistic short-term future isn’t an abrupt switch from mobile money to Web3, but a fusion. Think of USSD-based mobile wallets that can also hold stablecoins, or crypto platforms that allow withdrawals in local currency via mobile money agents. Projects like Celo are already experimenting with blockchain payments that work on basic feature phones. The goal is to make blockchain as accessible as USSD—not an app reserved for those with high-end smartphones and constant internet access. In this hybrid model, mobile money agents could become Web3 gateways, helping users buy, sell, and send digital assets alongside their existing mobile money services.

Africa’s journey from cash to mobile money showed the world what local innovation can achieve. The leap from mobile money to Web3 won’t be identical—it will be more complex, more global, and potentially even more transformative. If mobile money was Africa’s answer to financial exclusion in the 2000s, Web3 could be its answer to global financial participation in the 2020s and beyond. But success will depend on building trust, crafting smart regulations, and ensuring that these tools serve not just the tech elite, but the everyday market trader, student, and farmer.

The revolution may have started with a simple text message.

The next one could be written in code.