Africa holds about 30 of global mineral reserves and nearly 40 of the world's gold. Yet extractive economic models rooted in colonial-era practices continue to funnel this wealth to a narrow elite and foreign investors, leaving the vast majority of Africans excluded from the riches beneath their feet.
Mamadou Toure, founder and chief executive of the Ubuntu Tribe company, is determined to fix this through blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. His company sets out to offer a new way to access fractional shares of gold through tradeable digital tokens.
Democratising access to gold"Today with blockchain you can tokenise an asset, meaning issue a certificate of ownership of this asset. We have issued what we call GIFT, which stands for gold international fungible token and is equivalent to one milligram of gold," he tells African Business .
