Zimbabwe to study Nigeria's eNaira case as it pursues its CBDC plans

Zimbabwe’s Central bank sends team to Ghana, China to study digital money as CBDC plans remain in place, central banker said.

Zimbabwe is drawing lessons from Nigeria as it pursues plans for its own central bank digital currency and won’t be deterred by lackluster interest shown over the Nigerian central bank digital currency, Bloomberg reports.

According to the deputy governor of Zimbabwe Reserve Bank Innocent Matshe, the slow uptake of the eNaira, Africa’s first CBDC, is unlikely to sway Zimbabwe’s decision-making to introduce its central bank digital currency . “Certainly it’s a point to consider that there is hesitancy in the market,” he said Tuesday in an interview at a conference near Port Louis, Mauritius. “We don’t think that it is a deterrent at this point, we just think that it is a learning point for us. We can then adopt measures to try and mitigate the factors that are causing that hesitancy in the Nigerian market.”

The government sent teams to visit several central banks around the world to study their plans for CBDCs, including Ghana and China, Matshe said. “It will have its own specificities,” he said. “We are not expecting that it will be directly linked to any currency, we are keeping all our options open.”

Less than 0.5% of Nigerians transact in the nation’s digital money. That’s prompted the central bank to seek new ways to boost interest, including offering discounts to drivers and passengers of three-wheeler taxis to use the eNaira.

Zimbabwe has had its own currency woes. The local dollar has lost more than 80% of its value against the greenback this year and the government tried a series of measures to contain an even steeper decline on the parallel market that stoked rampant inflation. The US dollar is widely used in the country as an alternative.