How Africans Are Using Bitcoin Without Internet Access

Somali refugee women look at a mobile phone at Dadaab refugee complex, in Kenya, on April 16, 2018. ... [+] Kenya is one of the African nations where bitcoin users are now using mobile phones to transact over the Lightning Network, even without internet. (Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images)

There’s a growing population of Africans without reliable internet access that are still using bitcoin for peer-to-peer transactions thanks to a solution called Machankura .

In 2022, South African software developer Kgothatso Ngako built a tool, Machankura, for accessing bitcoin despite the continent’s mobile internet connectivity challenge. It offers a way to access the Lightning Network through an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data interface, utilizing mobile phones’ Subscriber Identity Module telecommunication network. USSD is similar to Interactive Voice Response.

You usually listen to an IVR program when you call a mobile network operator’s customer service. It tells you which numbers to press for the service you want to access. USSD is kind of like IVR but in textual form. Machankura is already being used by roughly 2,900 African users across more than seven countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Namibia, Ngako told me. Despite the rapidly growing tech industry on the continent, internet penetration across Africa still has a long way to go.

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