USDT to Power Africa’s $70B Digital Trade Backbone in IOTA-Led Initiative
Africa is accelerating its shift toward digital trade, unveiling a sweeping initiative that places stablecoins, particularly USDT, at the center of a continent-wide modernization effort aimed at cutting costs, reducing delays, and opening new economic opportunities.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, in partnership with the IOTA Foundation, the Tony Blair Institute, and the World Economic Forum, announced the Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade (ADAPT) program. The plan aims to build a unified, open-source digital infrastructure supporting instant cross-border payments, verifiable trade documents, and interoperable digital identities across all 55 AfCFTA member states.
The initiative marks one of the most ambitious attempts to integrate blockchain-based finance into national trade systems. USDT is expected to serve as the primary settlement rail, giving African traders access to faster payments and new forms of trade finance previously blocked by slow, paper-heavy processes.
“Now that we’ve solved the data problem, digitizing and authenticating trade documents, we can do the trade finance part,” said IOTA Foundation founder Dominik Schiener. “We will also offer tokenization of physical assets such as commodities and critical minerals, and cross-border payments using stablecoins like USDT for real-world payments.”
Cutting Costs and Paperwork Across African Borders
Today, African businesses lose an estimated $25 billion annually to transaction fees and billions more to document fraud. Logistics remain overwhelmingly analog, a single shipment can require 240 paper documents exchanged among 30 different entities. In Kenya, border agents previously logged into 13 systems just to verify one consignment.
IOTA-backed pilots in Kenya and Rwanda are already showing measurable impact. Kenyan exporters are saving around $400 per month on printing and documentation, freight forwarders have reduced manual paperwork by up to 60%, and border clearance times have dropped from six hours to about 30 minutes. Kenya now records around 100,000 transactions per day on IOTA’s ledger.
Toward a Continental Digital Trade Network
ADAPT will initially roll out in Kenya, Ghana, and a soon-to-be-named North African country before expanding from 2026 onward. By 2035, the goal is to connect all 55 AfCFTA nations into a shared digital trade system expected to double intra-African trade, unlock $70 billion in new value, and generate over $23 billion in annual economic gains.
Schiener says the project can directly link African industries, such as mining, agriculture, and manufacturing, to accessible, low-cost on-chain finance. “We could help a miner in Rwanda get access to onchain trade finance at 50% of the cost, getting paid almost instantly with low transaction fees using USDT,” he said. “This is how we move beyond the typical boom and bust cycles in crypto and anchor our industry with real assets, real adoption, and real value.”
As global regulators increasingly formalize stablecoin oversight, African governments see a chance to leapfrog legacy systems and tap into digital payment rails already gaining mainstream acceptance worldwide. ADAPT suggests that stablecoins may soon become a backbone not just for crypto markets, but for Africa’s next era of economic integration.
