Kenya’s Bold National Digital Currency Experiment Puts Solana Front and Center
Nairobi's blockchain gambit cuts through traditional finance—choosing Solana's high-speed rails for its national digital currency prototype.
Why Solana beats the legacy players
Lightning transaction speeds and minuscule fees made Solana the obvious pick. Kenya's tech ministry bypassed slower chains—opting for the network that handles thousands of transactions per second without breaking a sweat.
The real test: adoption beyond hype
This isn't just another central bank digital currency project. Kenya's aiming for actual utility—from cross-border remittances to local merchant adoption. They're betting Solana's architecture can handle real-world economic activity, not just speculative trading.
Watch the traditional banks suddenly discover 'blockchain innovation' now that governments are playing their game better.
A bold bet meets a skeptical public
The choice of solana is a technical decision with profound economic implications. Kenya’s existing mobile-money ecosystem, led by M-Pesa, thrives on the very high-volume, low-value transactions that many blockchains struggle to process affordably.
Solana’s architecture, built for speed and minimal fees, directly addresses this need, suggesting a pragmatic aim to build a scalable digital-payments LAYER rather than a simple digital replica of the shilling.
However, the announcement was met with immediate and pronounced skepticism on social media. On X, Kenyans responded to Raila Odinga’s video with a wave of concern, many questioning if his account had been hacked or if the video was a sophisticated deepfake.
The cynical reaction stems from recent, painful history. Commenters pointed to the cautionary tales of Cuba and the Central African Republic, where state-associated Solana tokens spectacularly collapsed. One user succinctly captured the prevailing anxiety, warning, “another country is coming to empty our liquidity,” arguing that such “country coins” don’t “always end well.”
Another country is coming to empty our liquidity.
Country coins, Don’t always end well.
In recent months, several governments have either attempted or been linked to Solana-based national tokens that ended in embarrassment. In January, the official X account of Cuba’s foreign ministry promoted a series of memecoins named CUBA that were rug-pulled within hours, vaporizing a $30 million market cap and leaving investors reeling.
Similarly, a token purportedly launched by the president of the Central African Republic, CAR, pumped to a $900 million valuation before crashing amid allegations of it being an elaborate scam fueled by an AI-generated deepfake video of the leader. For observers in Nairobi, those cautionary tales are hard to ignore.
The shifting crypto landscape in Kenya
The irony is that Kenya’s MOVE represents a sharp reversal from its own central bank’s posture just two years ago. In 2023, the Central Bank of Kenya concluded that a digital currency was “not a compelling priority,” citing fading global allure and implementation challenges faced by other nations.
The CBK argued that existing mobile-money technologies were sufficient, a position that makes the current Solana-driven initiative a dramatic U-turn in national policy and underscores how much the political winds have shifted in a short period of time.
Notably, the shift has been reinforced by a policy pivot at the Treasury. In January, Treasury Secretary John Mbadi confirmed that the government was working on a regulatory framework for digital assets and service providers.
Mbadi said Kenya aims to balance innovation with safeguards against money laundering, fraud, and terrorism financing. The revelation followed a draft policy last December, signaling that Nairobi is serious about shaping rules for a sector that, until recently, operated almost entirely in a legal gray zone.
