The Role Of Africa In the Future of NFT
Since the explosion of NFTs, a lot of activities have left people more confused about how this new oil well works. We have witnessed pictures of apes being sold for tens of millions of dollars and endless headlines about million-dollar NFT projects.
Non-fungible tokens have created room for more engagement in the Blockchain and crypto space. This has made room for tokenization of assets to be embraced by even the arts, music and other industries.
While NFT is steadily becoming popular, a majority of people still do not understand the meaning. In this article, we are going to be explaining the meaning of NFT and how Africa has leveraged it.
What are Non-fungible Tokens?
NFTs are cryptographic tokens mainly built on the Blockchain. It allows anyone to generate them in a process called minting. Unlike cryptocurrencies, each unit differs. Therefore, it is said to be non-fungible.
One would say Africa is championing the adoption of non-fungible tokens. Undoubtedly, the continent is aggressively leveraging on its endless well of historical and archeological artifacts, arts, music, creativity, and communities.
How Africa Has Played A Vital Role In The Fulfillment Of NFTs
It is hard to measure how much money has been invested into the non-fungible tokens minted on different chains and listed across various NFT marketplaces. However, here are some exciting adoption stories from creatives in Africa leveraging non-fungible tokens.
Art and Culture
Nigerian-born photographer Adisa Olashile whose story went wild and viral. This happened after taking pictures of an indigenous aged man, playing a typical drum with history and value to African culture. It soon became a master piece in the NFT marketplace after putting it up as a non-fungible token on Opensea.
The image that depicted culture and lifestyle was turned into mint. It also brought in a whopping sum of money in sales that went viral on social media
Music
Another popular NFT story in Africa is that of a well-known Nigerian musician, popularly known as ‘Falz’ and his ice-cream collection on the Binance smart-chain
Falz launched his non-fungible tokens in March on the Binance smart chain now BNB chain. He attached exclusive access to private calls with him on zoom to holders. He also granted access to limited-edition merchandise, and exclusive parties among others.
image credit: falz icecream collections
These non-fungible tokens have generated lots of traction and engagements from people. Africans host different sessions talking about potential non-fungible tokens like this, to buy.
Sports and Entertainment
Eliud Kipchoge is a Kenyan professional marathon winner. He won the 2016 and 2020 Olympics marathon race. He is also a Berlin marathon record holder who sold his marathon videos for $37,351.
The Olympic winner auctioned off moments of his Berlin marathon and highlights of his career on momentible.io. He also auctioned off his historic sub-two marathon in Vienna. He earned about $50,000 in the process estimated to be about 17.9 Ethereum.
Other stories from the African scenes feature music producers like Don Jazzy, Ghanaian sculptors, and digital artist who mints Fantastical Altos for 1ETH.
Conclusion
Since NFTs have evolved past the Ethereum blockchain into other Blockchains, a lot has changed. Experts believe sentiments and emotions mostly determine prices.
Non-fungible tokens have created opportunities for virtually everyone, including digital paint artists who mostly are engaged now by whitelist hunters making fan-arts.
Since spreading to other chains, more Africans have been encouraged to look into the NFTs space with many platforms now supporting next to zero transaction fees in the minting and listing process.
However, while the market cap cannot be rightly measured, activities and engagements seen by top Africans are a good measure of how Africans are contributing to the NFTs space and adopting this innovation.
