Africa: digital-asset regulation
26 entries.
June 2026
At its 17 to 19 June plenary in Paris, the last under the Mexican presidency, the FATF removed Algeria and Namibia from the list of Jurisdictions Under Increased Monitoring and added Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina, leaving 22 jurisdictions on the grey list. Kenya was not among the exits: it remains under increased monitoring while it completes its action plan, which matters directly for the VASP licensing regime it is finalising, since Travel Rule implementation under the draft VASP Regulations (cpm-2026-0002) is part of Kenya's case for delisting. With South Africa out in May (cpm-2026-0007) and now Algeria and Namibia following, African delistings are becoming a pattern rather than an exception. Six African jurisdictions remain on the list.
The CBN unveiled its Payments System Vision 2028 in Abuja on 1 June, the roadmap promised when the Payments Service Providers Committee launched in April (cpm-2026-0019). The headline target is 95% financial inclusion by 2028, but the regulatory story is stablecoins: the document references them dozens of times and proposes an enabling framework recognising fiat-collateralised stablecoins as a distinct category of digital monetary instrument, with CBN licensing, full high-quality reserve backing, daily attestations, monthly audits and real-time supervisory visibility. The eNaira is repositioned as payment infrastructure rather than a consumer product, and the vision contemplates regulated stablecoins in live cross-border corridors for trade and remittances. Five years after ordering banks away from crypto, Nigeria's central bank is designing stablecoins into its payments architecture. The framework's legal form is the thing to watch next.
May 2026
Law nº 023/2026 of 25/05/2026 regulating virtual asset business was published in Rwanda's Official Gazette n° Special of 28/05/2026 and, under article 40, came into force that day with no transitional period. The Capital Market Authority is the Regulatory Authority, working with the National Bank of Rwanda on stability and payments (art. 8). Six criminal offences commenced with it, from FRW 15,000,000 for unlicensed marketing to FRW 150,000,000 for issuing virtual assets without approval, with personal liability for directors who mislead or obstruct the CMA (art. 37). Article 15(1) bars natural persons from virtual asset business outright. Licensing, capital thresholds, liquidity ratios and the whole administrative sanctions regime (art. 32) are deferred to regulations that had not been issued as of 1 September 2026, checked against the gazette index to 25 August and the CMA's own regulations, guidelines and directives pages. Firms are exposed under article 34 and cannot apply. Article 27(2)(b) ties every provider's personal data measures to Law 058/2021, already in force under the NCSA.
Effective 19 May 2026, Nigerian equities and commodities settle T+1. It is a market-plumbing change rather than a crypto rule, but it belongs on this monitor for what it signals: the same regulator writing VASP-adjacent rules is compressing settlement toward the T+0 world that tokenized markets assume. Brokers, custodians and clearing members had days rather than months to re-tool reconciliation, a preview of the operational tempo African market infrastructure reform is now running at.
SEC Nigeria published Rules on Commodity Exchanges, Warehouse Receipt Systems and Collateral Management under ISA 2025, setting licensing and operational standards for commodity market participants, including real-world asset tokenization. Paired with Ghana's Africoin sandbox admission a month earlier, this is the second African regulator in a quarter to give agricultural and natural-resource tokenization an explicit legal home. Licensing pathways were expected Q2 to Q3 2026; platforms building RWA products on Nigerian rails now have a rulebook to design against.
Ten weeks after quietly surveying fintechs on crypto (cpm-2026-0011), the BCEAO convened an international conference in Dakar on 8 May on crypto-assets and digital innovations and their implications for monetary and financial stability. The agenda was regulatory, not promotional: stablecoin implications for monetary policy, prudential supervision and regional cooperation, cybersecurity and financial integrity. The Governor's stated objective was a proportionate regulatory framework coordinated at the regional level. Read the trajectory: the central bank of the eight-state UEMOA zone has moved from silence to intelligence-gathering to public convening inside six months, the standard runway a central bank builds before it regulates. Whatever framework emerges will bind Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo simultaneously. Source in French; translation ours.
South Africa was removed from the FATF list of Jurisdictions Under Increased Monitoring after a multi-year action plan coordinated across Treasury, SARB and the FSCA. For crypto this is the continent's most consequential AML development of the half-year. Grey-list status was a standing objection institutional allocators raised against SA-regulated platforms, and its removal converts the country's CASP licensing regime from a compliance burden into a sales asset. Watch the knock-ons: Kenya's grey-list review was due at the June 2026 plenary, and Nigeria's action plan is in progress. Delisting is now the template other African jurisdictions will be measured against.
April 2026
CBK posted senior and managerial roles for virtual asset licensing and compliance while the VASP regulations were still in consultation. Read the sequencing: the regulator is building supervisory capacity ahead of the final rules, which points to licensing applications opening soon after gazettement, plausibly in Q3 2026. The hiring also confirms the division of labour in practice. CBK takes payment-side VASPs and stablecoin issuers; CMA takes exchanges, brokers and tokenization platforms. Regulators who staff up intend to enforce. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the final regulations remained ungazetted and licensing had not opened.
Gazetted on 17 April 2026 (Government Gazette No. 7375), the Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations replace the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961 in their entirety and bring crypto assets into South Africa's capital flow framework for the first time: crypto is expressly defined as capital, cross-border transfers above prescribed thresholds must run through an authorised crypto asset service provider, and an administrative penalties regime attaches. The draft also legislatively reverses the May 2025 Standard Bank ruling that crypto fell outside the 1961 regulations. It is the structural counterpart to FSCA licensing, CARF data-sharing (effective 1 March 2026) and FIC's Travel Rule guidance. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the comment deadline, originally 18 May, was extended to 30 June at stakeholders' request and has now closed. Final form pending.
The FSCA's supervisory update on Crypto Asset Service Providers reports 30 on-site inspections between April 2025 and March 2026, with regulatory expectations clarified under the FAIS Act framework. There is no new licensing regime yet; FAIS remains the baseline while Directive 9 and Travel Rule work continues. The inspection count is the story: SA's conduct regulator is actively supervising licensed CASPs, not just licensing them. For licensed firms, an inspection-readiness file is now a practical necessity rather than a nice-to-have.
A rules exposure draft set a minimum paid-up share capital of ₦7.5 billion for Free Trade Zone Entities seeking to list or offer shares on the Nigerian capital market, with a two-week comment window. FTZEs include technology, payments and blockchain infrastructure operators, so the capital floor quietly shapes which digital asset businesses can reach Nigerian public markets at all. The comment window closed in late April; the finalised rule is the thing to watch.
Public participation on the Draft VASP Regulations 2026 closed on 10 April. The Treasury's multi-agency task force, with CBK and CMA, moved to finalisation, with Cabinet approval and gazettement anticipated in Q2 2026. The framework covers licensing, capital, solvency and insurance requirements. With the Section 47 compliance deadline fixed at 4 November 2026, the gap between final regulations and the deadline is the entire licensing runway Kenyan VASPs will get. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the anticipated Q2 gazettement did not happen. The final text remained ungazetted, and the runway between final rules and the 4 November deadline is now under four months and shrinking.
The National Treasury signalled amendments to the Exchange Control Regulations to govern transfers of crypto assets to non-residents. This is the missing piece that puts crypto-to-fiat conversions and cross-border transfers under the same SARB approval and declaration machinery as ordinary currency transfers. The direction of travel is clear even before the text: VASPs holding customer funds, stablecoin issuers with cross-border redemption flows, and institutions moving ZAR into digital assets for offshore transfer should expect exchange-control reporting to become part of their compliance stack. The move aligns with FIC's Travel Rule guidance (PCC 123) and the wider capital flow management overhaul. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the signalled instrument arrived on 17 April as the Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations, 2026 (cpm-2026-0009).
SEC Ghana admitted Africoin, a Kigali-headquartered, Ethereum-based platform tokenizing cocoa, coffee, gold, silver and verified carbon credits, to its Virtual Asset Sandbox under Act 1154. It is the first documented sandbox participant, which matters more than the participant itself: Ghana's regulatory pathway is now operational rather than theoretical, and its 12-month sandbox term with a mid-term review at six months is a faster route to licensing than anything currently available in Kenya or Nigeria. Africoin says it is pursuing parallel approvals in several African countries, an early sighting of the multi-jurisdiction tokenization play the continent's new VASP laws will now have to accommodate.
Flutterwave secured a national microfinance banking licence, following Paystack's January acquisition of Ladder Microfinance Bank and earlier upgrades for OPay and Moniepoint. The pattern is a policy: CBN is forcing fintechs that hold customer funds to choose between pure payment processing and full banking licensing. The ₦250m Paystack fine over Zap wallet operations showed the regulator comparing licensed activity against actual activity. Any platform whose custody practices have outgrown its licence category, in Nigeria or elsewhere in the region, should read this as its warning.
Ripple's April 2026 analysis groups eight African jurisdictions by regulatory maturity: South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya leading; Ghana, Botswana and Ethiopia flagged as the next wave with compliance rollout through 2026; Mauritius grouped with the leaders. The framing, adoption metrics giving way to infrastructure reliability and operational trust, is corporate research with an agenda. Ripple is positioning itself as a partner to African regulators, which is precisely why the report is useful: it shows where a major industry player expects licensing regimes to be bankable. Notable omission: Senegal and the UEMOA bloc, whose BCEAO questionnaire suggests the map is already out of date.
The CBN inaugurated a joint Payments Service Providers Committee bringing the central bank, commercial banks, mobile money operators and fintechs to one table, after Nigeria's payment system crossed the quadrillion-naira mark with 11.2 billion transactions in 2024. A new Payments System Vision was promised within a month of launch. For digital assets the interesting part is the grey zone the committee will inevitably touch: cross-border payments, stablecoin-adjacent services and BNPL currently sit between licensing categories, and a coordination body is where those lines get redrawn. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the promised vision arrived on 1 June as the Payments System Vision 2028, with stablecoins written into it (cpm-2026-0024).
March 2026
The National Treasury circulated the Draft Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, 2026 on 17 March. It is the first implementing instrument under the VASP Act 2025, published with a Regulatory Impact Statement and a multi-agency task force behind it. The draft sets licensing and authorisation processes for all VASP categories, including exchanges, custodial wallets and payment processors, and writes FATF Recommendation 15 and Travel Rule requirements into the Kenyan framework. Strong Travel Rule implementation also supports Kenya's argument for exiting FATF increased monitoring. The regulations, not the Act, decide what compliance actually costs; capital requirements and licensing categories land here. Re-verified 6 July 2026: comments closed 10 April and the final regulations had not been gazetted as of this date.
CMA Rwanda's chief executive presented the regulator's approach to tokenisation of financial assets at the Inclusive FinTech Forum in Kigali: securities tokenisation, real-world assets, and tokenised funds and derivatives, all framed under the existing Capital Markets Act rather than new legislation. The supporting infrastructure moved in parallel, with CSD Regulations issued 3 February and a draft Intermediary Service Platform Operator regulation out for consultation from 12 February. Formal tokenisation guidelines were expected Q2 to Q3 2026 with a licensing window signalled for H2. Rwanda is building a token-issuance jurisdiction methodically, and platforms wanting first-mover status should be watching the CMA rather than the headlines. Re-verified 6 July 2026: events overtook the existing-legislation framing. Law No. 023/2026 regulating virtual asset business was gazetted on 28 May, making the CMA lead regulator for virtual assets (cpm-2026-0023).
SEC Nigeria revoked Kensington Agro Trading Limited's registration as a capital market operator with immediate effect, invoking Section 61(6) of the Investments and Securities Act 2025. It is the first publicised revocation under the new statute's authority. Grounds were not disclosed; commodity exchanges and investors were told to cease dealings. The significance is procedural: fourteen months after enactment, the Commission is using ISA 2025's teeth and not just its licensing forms. Operators registered under the pre-2025 framework should treat their compliance posture as due for audit.
The NBE declared all birr-paired peer-to-peer crypto transactions illegal unless expressly authorised, citing FX manipulation, fraud and missing AML/CFT safeguards. It is Ethiopia's first named regulatory action on crypto. Read it as currency policy rather than crypto philosophy: after the July 2024 reform programme and a roughly 200% birr devaluation, the ban closes an arbitrage channel. The same statement confirms a comprehensive digital asset framework is in development with global peer regulators; the prohibition is scoped narrowly and authorisation is explicitly contemplated. When that framework lands, it would be East Africa's second formal licensing regime after Kenya. The ban is the signal; the framework is the story. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the framework had not been published; the Financial Intelligence Service was reported to be developing crypto transaction regulations, with wider legislation still expected in 2026.
February 2026
At the end of February 2026 the BCEAO circulated a questionnaire to fintech operators on possible uses of cryptocurrencies in the regional financial system, the first known crypto survey from the central bank of the eight-member UEMOA zone (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo). The BCEAO has never issued a formal crypto directive and licenses no VASPs, so a pre-consultation instrument is a genuine posture change: from silence to intelligence-gathering. Whatever framework follows will apply simultaneously across all eight states. One regulatory event, eight markets. Reported in French by Jeune Afrique; the questionnaire itself has not been published. Translation ours. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the posture change accelerated. On 8 May the BCEAO convened an international conference on crypto-assets in Dakar (cpm-2026-0026).
January 2026
SEC Nigeria issued a public warning declaring Aurum Bot, an online platform soliciting crypto investments, unregistered and unlicensed to operate in any capacity in Nigeria. It is one warning among many, and that is the point: under the Investments and Securities Act 2025 the Commission is running a steady surveillance-and-warning operation against unlicensed digital asset platforms, published through its circulars feed. Platforms soliciting Nigerian retail investors without ISA 2025 registration should assume they are visible.
On the same day as its Aurum Bot alert, SEC Nigeria warned against ModMount Services Limited, a CFD broker offering forex, stocks, commodities and crypto to Nigerian investors while presenting itself as a licensed international operator. The doctrine in the warning matters more than the name: claimed offshore licensing does not substitute for Nigerian registration under ISA 2025. Every multi-asset platform marketing to Nigerian retail from abroad is on notice.
December 2025
Ghana's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act (Act 1154) passed Parliament on 19 December 2025 and received presidential assent on 30 December, making it the third African standalone digital asset statute enacted in the October to December 2025 quarter, after Kenya and Nigeria. Africa's earlier standalone regimes include Mauritius (VAITOS Act 2021), Botswana (2022), Namibia (2023) and Seychelles (2024), so this is a claim about the pace of that quarter, not about being third on the continent. The model is co-regulatory: Bank of Ghana supervises the monetary and payments dimension, SEC Ghana the securities dimension. Licensing is mandatory for all VASPs, AML obligations attach, and crypto influencers reportedly fall within the licensing net. The target is an estimated $3 billion informal market involving roughly 17% of Ghanaian adults. BoG's supervisory rules were slated to roll out in phases through 2026.
November 2025
The Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 received presidential assent on 15 October 2025 and came into force on 4 November 2025, making it the first standalone virtual asset statute enacted in Africa. Supervision is split: CBK takes digital asset issuance and custodial services, while CMA takes exchanges, brokers and trading platforms. An earlier draft's standalone regulator, VARA, was dropped. The 3% digital asset tax was repealed in favour of excise duty on VASP service fees, a materially better outcome for holders and P2P users. Section 47 gives existing VASPs one year from commencement to comply. That clock runs out on 4 November 2026, and every VASP touching the Kenyan market needs a licensing position before then.
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