Unlocking Financial Freedom? How Nuud Money wants to empower Southern Africans through Cryptocurrency

When I joined Mpumelelo Ndamane on the Google Meet call, we exchanged pleasantries and talked for about 10-15 minutes to establish some familiarity with one another. The Nuud Money CEO who is based in Jo’Burg as it has come to be known was quite eager to get to know about me and Zimbabwe and so I indulged him. 

I explained to Mpumelelo how Zimbabwe has essentially two major cities and how Harare is more akin to Jo’Burg - breakneck pace, the great things and the not-so-great things that come with living in what has effectively become the centre of Zimbabwean commerce. 

Our conversation took a darker tone as I tried to paint a picture of the tribal divide that has also come to define the relationship of Harare and Bulawayo along with the loaded history that informed that… It was pretty random that I was sharing all this detail when it in fact had nothing directly to do with our conversation but this is where we found ourselves. 

In hindsight, I feel that our “little chat” before getting into the actual business of our meeting was foreshadowing as tribes and divisions were going to remain a focal point of our discussion. You see, Mpumelelo and I were on this call to talk about cryptocurrency. I might not have to state it plainly, but over the last decade, there have come to be two (or three) tribes in crypto. A tribe that heavily supports and embraces cryptocurrency, another that is firmly against digital currencies, (along with one that hasn’t fully grasped what cryptocurrency is and have been scared away by the technical knowledge required to dip one's toes in that world)…