eNaira: Nigeria’s digital currency has had a slow start – what’s holding it back

Iwa Salami

Nigeria was the first country in Africa to roll out a central bank digital currency. The eNaira was launched in October 2021.

The main reasons were to promote financial inclusion, increase cross-border transactions, facilitate diaspora remittances and complement existing payment systems.

But adoption has been low so far. Less than 0.5% of Nigerians were using it a year after it was launched.

Since October 2022, the number of e-Naira wallets has reportedly increased more than 12-fold to 13 million. There has also been a 63% increase to N22 billion (US$48 million) in the value of transactions so far in 2023, thanks to the currency crisis earlier in the year.

Still, a lot needs to be done to encourage the financially excluded to adopt the eNaira.

It’s important for Nigeria and other African economies to use central bank digital currencies because the widespread use of crypto-assets poses a real