Africa just chose @iota to build the world’s first continent-wide digital trade infrastructure.

This is one of the biggest real-world blockchain adoption events we’ve seen so far, and it’s already running in live pilots.

Here's my bullish thesis on $IOTA 🧵

1. Why does this matter for Africa?

Africa’s trade system is still largely paper-based ↓

- Slow, fragmented border processes
- High fraud and error risk
- Cross-border fees of 6–9%, costing African economies ~$25B annually
- Small businesses lack trade finance due to insufficient trust verification

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which represents the African Union’s 55 member states and ~1.5B people, decided to fix this by building a unified digital trade infra.

Together with the World Economic Forum, the Tony Blair Institute, and the IOTA Foundation, they launched ADAPT (Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade).

ADAPT is a continent-wide digital backbone for identity, data, and payments, all this powered by $IOTA.

2. It's already WORKING

ADAPT is being rolled out in phases, but the early deployments are live and measurable.

Let's take the numbers for Kenya & Rwanda pilots as examples ↓

- Trade document verification time: 6–7 hours → ~30 minutes
- Exporters save around $400/month on paperwork
- 60–70% of manual steps removed in the trade process

These are real exporters, customs systems, and border points running on IOTA-powered rails.

3. The Economic Upside

Based on AfCFTA/ADAPT projections, once fully implemented, this infrastructure can ↓

- Double intra-African trade by 2035
- Unlock $70B+ in new trade value annually
- Generate $23.6B in yearly efficiency gains
- Cut border clearance times by well over 50%
- Reduce cross-border payment fees from 6–9% to below 3%

This is real economic activity moving onchain. This is real adoption.

4. Why IOTA?

Modernizing trade is more about infrastructure than software. The network would need to be fast, secure, with low fees, provide support for documents, compliance, and RWA.

This is exactly what IOTA’s L1 offers ↓

- Move-based smart contracts on a parallelized DAG
- Delegated Proof of Stake + Mysticeti consensus for 50k+ TPS and sub-second finality
- Adaptive fee burn and sponsored transactions to abstract fees
- Staking yields of 11–12% APY

It's the ideal choice for designing digital public infrastructure for trade.

5. $IOTA thesis

ADAPT is a long-term infrastructure build with a roadmap to all 55 AfCFTA countries by 2035.

That implies:

- Millions of IOTA trade settlements
- Onchain shipments, documents, certificates, and identities burn fees and lock tokens
- Stablecoins for cross-border payments
- Tokenized assets used as collateral in on-chain finance
- Institutions accumulating IOTA for infrastructure use

On top of that:

- No major VC unlocks coming
- Initial supply given to the community, not VCs
- About 50% of IOTA is staked, reducing the liquid supply
- Real-world use drives volume, fee burning, and token lockups
- Real economic flows → durable token demand → long-term value capture for the network and its holders.

6. Final Thoughts ↓

Africa is creating the world's most advanced digital trade infrastructure, powered by IOTA. It's a rare instance of a public blockchain adopted continent-wide, supported by

- AfCFTA
- Global institutions (WEF, Tony Blair Institute)
- National governments

Africa isn't just catching up, it's evolving to onchain trade rails with IOTA at its core.