ABA Editorial · Mar 13, 2026 · 13 min read
Nigeria launched the eNaira in October 2021, becoming the first African country and only the second globally to roll out a retail CBDC. By 2024, less than 0.5 percent of Nigerians had used it. By 2025, eNaira wallets reached approximately 13 million but 98.5 percent had never been used (IMF). Ghana's eCedi remains in pilot. Morocco and Egypt are running a cross-border CBDC experiment. Inside what has and has not worked, and why private stablecoins are winning where CBDCs have failed.
In October 2021, Nigeria became the first African country and only the second country globally (after the Bahamas' Sand Dollar) to officially launch a central bank digital currency. The eNaira was marketed as a financial inclusion breakthrough, a cross-border remittance enabler, and an efficiency upgrade to the existing Nigerian payments system. Four and a half years later, the eNaira is still technically operational but widely regarded as a failure to achieve its stated objectives. Ghana's eCedi, announced with comparable expectations in 2021 and piloted through 2023-2024, remains in limbo as of early 2026 with no full retail rollout date. South Africa's Project Khokha continues as a wholesale CBDC experiment rather than a retail launch. Morocco and Egypt launched a joint cross-border CBDC experiment in July 2025. This is a market report on where African CBDCs actually stand in 2026, what the adoption data shows, and why private stablecoins have consistently outcompeted central bank digital currencies in the African context.
The eNaira was launched on 25 October 2021 by then-President Muhammadu Buhari, with Central Bank of Nigeria technical partnership from Bitt Inc. The stated objectives were to boost financial inclusion, enhance cross-border CBDC transactions, simplify diaspora remittances, and supplement existing payment infrastructure. By October 2023, less than 0.5 percent of Nigerians had actively used the eNaira, according to CBN and IMF data cited across multiple sources. The Central Bank of Nigeria's own 2023 Adoption Barriers report admitted that urban elites, not the unbanked, were the primary users, which exactly inverted the financial inclusion pitch.
Subsequent CBN efforts to boost adoption included the controversial 2022-2023 demonetization program that restricted cash withdrawals in an attempt to force digital payment use. The policy produced cash shortages, long lines at banks, and public protests. According to Human Rights Foundation data, CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele claimed adoption grew from 0.5 percent to 6 percent during the demonetization period, but IMF research subsequently found that 98.5 percent of issued eNaira wallets had never been used. In March 2024, CBN data showed total eNaira in circulation had grown from NGN 2.55 billion (approximately USD 1.6 million) in December 2022 to NGN 12.53 billion (approximately USD 7.8 million), representing approximately 0.37 percent of total Nigerian currency in circulation. Physical cash still made up 99.63 percent.
In July 2024, new CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso declared the eNaira a success on the grounds that 12 percent of the population had opened wallets and there had been approximately 2.2 million transactions. That framing sidestepped the unused-wallet problem. In March 2024, the CBN signed a partnership with Gluwa to integrate the startup's blockchain-powered credit technology into the eNaira, aiming to create credit reputations for unbanked Nigerians. As of February 2025, the eNaira in circulation had grown to NGN 18.31 billion (approximately USD 11.4 million), still approximately 0.37 percent of currency in circulation.
The gap between the technical launch success and the adoption failure has multiple explanations. Nigerians widely distrusted the CBN's motives, associating the eNaira with surveillance concerns. Competition from existing mobile money services (OPay, PalmPay, Paga) was intense and existing services were better. The eNaira's initial user interface and product experience were poor. And the underlying incentive to use a state-backed digital currency rather than a private mobile wallet was unclear to most consumers.
Ghana took a deliberately different approach. The Bank of Ghana announced eCedi research in 2019 and piloted the currency in Sefwi Asafo, a remote village in the country's Eastern Region, beginning in September 2021. The pilot design explicitly emphasized offline functionality via contactless smartcards and wearables, because much of the target population lacked reliable internet access. Bank of Ghana's technical partner is Giesecke+Devrient, which provides the CBDC solution based on distributed ledger technology. According to Kwame Oppong, Head of Fintech and Innovation at the Bank of Ghana, offline access was the critical design goal: "It was an important feature for us to deliver because, at present, there is no commercial solution that allows for digital money to function in an offline environment."
The eCedi was expected to launch in retail form by the end of 2025, contingent on the passage of enabling legislation. As of early 2026, that legislation had not fully passed, and the retail rollout remained pending. In February 2025, Bank of Ghana Governor Ernest Addison retired after his term ended and was replaced by Dr Johnson Asiama. The change in leadership created uncertainty about whether the eCedi project would accelerate or stall further.
The Bank of Ghana has tested eCedi for cross-border payments with Singapore's Monetary Authority and has tested integration concepts with MTN Mobile Money, Vodafone Cash (now Telecel Cash), and Zeepay. Whether these tests translate into production remains the open question for 2026.
South Africa's CBDC strategy diverges sharply from Nigeria's and Ghana's. The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has focused on wholesale CBDC applications through Project Khokha and Project Khokha 2, which test the use of digital tokens for interbank settlement rather than for consumer retail payments. SARB also participates in Project Dunbar, a multi-central-bank experiment with Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore for international wholesale CBDC settlement. These are institutionally significant but deliberately invisible to ordinary consumers. SARB's position has effectively been that consumer-facing CBDCs have not yet demonstrated clear value over existing private payment infrastructure, so there is no urgency to launch one.
This position has been validated by the eNaira experience. By focusing on wholesale applications where CBDC genuinely improves settlement efficiency and data governance, SARB has avoided the retail adoption trap that caught the CBN.
In July 2025, Bank Al-Maghrib Governor Abdellatif Jouahri announced that Morocco was conducting a CBDC experiment in collaboration with the Central Bank of Egypt, with support from the World Bank. The experiment specifically focuses on cross-border transfer use cases, which is the one CBDC application where the economic logic is clearest: two central banks can settle between each other in digital form faster and cheaper than correspondent banking allows. The Morocco-Egypt experiment is at an early stage and no production launch date has been announced.
This approach (CBDC as cross-border settlement rail rather than retail consumer product) is probably the most promising framing for African CBDCs in 2026, and it mirrors the structural logic of PAPSS. Whether CBDCs or PAPSS becomes the dominant cross-border settlement infrastructure is an open question, and the two may ultimately work as complements rather than competitors.
Perhaps the most interesting development in African digital currency in 2025 was the emergence of cNGN, a Nigerian stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the naira and issued by private-sector partners with regulatory oversight from the SEC. Unlike the eNaira, cNGN adoption has been driven by voluntary commercial use rather than central bank mandate. The cNGN is backed by Nigerian banks and fintechs who saw value in a private naira stablecoin they could integrate into their own products. The contrast with the eNaira is stark: the private stablecoin has been gaining traction precisely because it is not controlled by the central bank.
More broadly, private dollar-pegged stablecoins (USDT and USDC) have absorbed the African demand for programmable, cross-border-capable digital currency that CBDCs were supposed to serve. The Chainalysis 2025 data showed stablecoins accounting for approximately 43 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's crypto transaction volume (covered in more detail in the crypto batch of this series). Effectively, African consumers and businesses have been voting with their wallets for private stablecoin infrastructure over state-issued digital currencies.
Three things. First, whether the Bank of Ghana eCedi finally launches in retail form under the new governor, or whether the project continues to slip. Second, whether the Morocco-Egypt cross-border CBDC experiment produces operational results that validate the wholesale CBDC thesis, or whether it becomes another long-running pilot. Third, whether additional African central banks formally recognize private stablecoins as regulated categories (following South Africa's intergovernmental fintech working group direction), which would effectively concede the retail digital currency space to private issuers while retaining central bank authority over wholesale settlement.
The longer-term observation is that CBDCs as originally framed (retail digital currencies issued directly to consumers) have struggled in Africa because they were solving a problem the private sector had already solved better. Mobile money, bank-issued digital money, and stablecoins together cover most of the retail use cases CBDCs were meant to address. Where CBDCs genuinely add value is in central bank-to-central bank settlement and in specific cross-border corridors where private alternatives are weak. If African CBDC projects refocus on those narrower goals, they have a chance of delivering real impact. If they continue to chase the retail inclusion story that has not worked anywhere on the continent, they will continue to be cautionary tales.
This report draws on Cointelegraph's eNaira overview (November 2025); Human Rights Foundation CBDC Tracker Nigeria entry; the African Leadership Magazine analysis "Africa's CBDC Agenda: Financial Inclusion Or State Surveillance" (July 2025); Ghanamma and GhHeadlines analysis of the eCedi stagnation (February 2025); Mariblock reporting on Bank of Ghana eCedi pilot (February 2025); CoinGeek coverage of the CBN and Gluwa MoU (May 2025); Techpoint Africa comparative analysis of eNaira vs eCedi (June 2025); ODI insights analysis of CBDCs in Africa (May 2025); and Morocco World News coverage of the Bank Al-Maghrib CBDC experiment announcement (July 2025).