A shoe importer in Lagos walks into his bank to buy dollars for a shipment from Guangzhou. The teller laughs, not because it's a joke, but because the bank's FX window is empty for the week. Two days later, the same importer settles the invoice with his supplier- in USDT, a dollar-pegged stablecoin. The shoes arrive on schedule.
Across the continents trade hubs, some importers now bypass the banking queue entirely. They price a shipment, ask their Chinese supplier for a wallet address, and settle the invoice in minutes with a dollar-pegged stablecoin. It's not fringe anymore data shows stablecoins have surged across Sub-Saharan Africa exactly when local currencies crater. Governments may frown, but for many SMEs, it's working capital trumps ideology.
Imagine being a profitable company with orders booked, yet unable to import essential raw materials because your bank literally has no dollars to give you. Or sitting on USD 180 M in revenue trapped in another African country because converting Ethiopian Birr to Nigerian Naira requires routing through USD you can't access. This was the reality for Ethiopian Airlines and Dangote Cement just two years ago, forcing them into a complex USD 100 M bilateral swap deal just to keep operating a sort of corporate barter system.
