Jumping the Shark on a Rocket to the Moon ~ May 2022 In the Rearview

Mayday-Mayday

The month began, as many so often do, with money problems. Medical evacuations from the country were suspended due to budget cuts and those dirty words bankruptcy and austerity were bandied about. If that weren’t enough all CAR’s creditors and financial partners have been apoplectic ever since the Bitcoin announcement in late April. Threats of CAR being excluded from the CFA bloc were tossed around and everyone from the IMF, to the World Bank, to the BEAC, to the COBAC expressed dubious skepticism. It wasn’t just the expected doubters spouting disdain, confusion over Bitcoin and its potential in CAR came in from all but the most crypto devout.?

All month long Nzako changed hands whether the headlines were Rebels attack Nzako or Russians retake Nzako it seemed the locals suffered. Like a pi?ata at a party they bore the brunt of the beatings and pillaging like it was their duty. Wagner came under more fire both direct and indirect as Russian crimes inflamed passions worldwide. Rumors also had it that President Touadéra’s social media was being controlled from Moscow.

Filmmaker and musician Rafiki brought his acclaimed documentary We, Students! to Bangui for its debut where it was met with initial enthusiasm but was promptly banned by authorities. I spoke with Rafiki Fariala via Twitter earlier in the month and he seemed surprised by the reaction but was otherwise ok after his unexpected run in with government sensitivity and censorship.?

Maxime Mokom faced the music at the ICC for his role in crimes connected to the civil war’s early days back in 2013 and 2014. You might recall he was arrested in Chad back in March of this year.

FACA and its long term role in establishing a path to peace and stability was pointed out and the state of emergency declaration by the US government was extended yet again. The Africa Development Bank piled on with most of the rest of the big money and withdrew its checkbook from CAR. With France and the EU ending support and no one ecstatic about the turn to Bitcoin or the influence of Russia, the financial situation seems to be sliding from merely broke to absolutely broken. The announcement that a deal had been struck in Dubai for Bitcoin mining to begin by the CAR government was either a clever gambit or desperate gamble. I’m betting on the latter. Expanding digital governance will be essential in any case and expanding internet capacity and electrical grid reliability seem like obvious top priorities. Crypto doubters though are calling foul on the whole ecosystem and the market keeps sliding ever further off its record highs of late last year.

This month marked the 8th anniversary of the death of journalist Camille LePage, an as yet unsolved murder that calls to attention the fact that reporting from CAR is still nowhere near safe. The suspicious poisoning death of Jean Saint-Clair Maka Gbossokotto earlier this year hammers that home. Vice did manage to do some bravely thorough reporting over the last few months though and their report is a must see. They had access to areas that are virtual no-go zones and were able to sit down with various representatives of the Russian’s working in the country. Tense conversations were had and the tough questions were asked. Whether the answers were satisfactory or frightening you can decide.

The UN began laying out the case for widespread Russian atrocities in CAR and it’s not a hard one to make. The fog of war certainly hangs heavy still and another month brought another large scale massacre of over 20 people, this one in Bokolobo. A chaotic period was on tap for basically the whole country for the whole month; with attacks coming from all sides in Ouadda, Bria, Gadzi, Vakaga, Tiringoulou, Ndiffa, Gordile, Manou, Ouandja, Boda, Nana-Bakassa, Mberguiri, Ndongori and a reprisal attack in Bokolobo that killed 10 more. A profile of Ippy from mid-month colors in the tragic details of what daily life is like for the average citizen facing the constant turmoil.

Big Mac and Big F.A.T. kept up the 3D arm wrestling match as their complicated relationship seems to be reaching a new precipice. France was already frowning on bitcoin and the coziness with the Kremlin but they upped the ante by hassling various members of CAR’s elite and their families with visa issues and questions about sublets. The influence of Wagner and the Russians in general on team Touadéra have landed them all in the crosshairs of international scrutiny and no wonder.??

Cameroon reopened its border with CAR thankfully and goods were once again flowing between the two nations. Given that this is the main axis for getting basically anything into the landlocked nation, this temporary border closure highlighted the precarious supply chains of CAR. Roadblocks, IEDs, and poor conditions plague the highways and byways at the best of times.

A new study brought to light the fact that mosquitoes bite in the day just as much as at night and that more effective mitigation efforts were necessary, as a reliance on mosquito nets while sleeping is not enough to curb malaria outbreaks. Floods in Bangui wreaked havoc in the lower lying districts, a disastrous 180 from the fires that caused so much damage earlier in the year.

All the buzz was around Bitcoin though as the mathematician President Touadéra brought the crypto world’s focus to Bangui. His announcement of the mysterious Sango - The First Crypto Initiative raised more questions than it provided answers but a plan of some kind seems to be in place. Talk of “crypto islands” both real and imagined in the Metaverse and on the Ubangi tantalized the faithful, while offers of e-residency and investment opportunities had some signing up for the waitlist to find out more. A delegation of French-speaking Bitcoiners held an informational session for the crypto curious in Bangui.

While the World Bank seemed puzzled to be a part of the plan, as they had pledged money for digital infrastructure to the country, but were surprised to find out this was where the funds were headed. Reading the Sango Crypto Initiative one wonders if the orange pill the bitcoin evangelicals so often speak of is in fact Orange Sunshine. It’s all a bit out there and fantastical and vague in much the same way that ethereal psychedelic knowledge floats like a mist in an alternate reality. Good trips can be like a magic wand of possibility and conjuring new realities isn’t impossible given just the right set and setting. The motivation to disrupt the status quo seems stronger than ever among this crew so time will tell.

Crypto geopolitics were offered up as the most likely explanation for this sudden lurch towards Bitcoin. With the sanctions on Russia looking to be a long term feature of geoeconomics, crypto is one avenue to evade traditional banking oversight. The purse strings for Bangui have been clipped in rapid fashion and the word is they need to mine Bitcoin to even make payroll come July. Touadéra seems intent on ending term limits and granting himself a third beyond 2026 so there’s at least one long term hodler in office in Bangui. Entrenching himself with the Bitcoin bunch may be one more hedge to help hold onto power but who knows.

Frankly I find it hard to believe crypto is the panacea it claims to be. For starters it’s such a huge waste of electricity just to solve pointlessly difficult math problems and CAR's grid is sketchy at best. Some will claim it’s about to become more efficient but those sound like the same kind of guys always talking about “clean coal”. Its usefulness for the unbanked is hyped, but there is already M-Pesa and its utility has been proven elsewhere in Africa. Even in El Salvador with a much larger remittance culture, uptake of that government’s wallet has been abysmal with most signing up for the bonus then never using it again. Throwing off the yoke of the CFA and giving the finger to the IMF is the tough talk of the moment but adding BTC to the mix isn’t doing anything really, it seems merely a way to facilitate an alternative and more opaque revenue stream for CAR’s elites. The crypto tax haven and residency through investment schemes have a strong whiff of the shady as shit to me as well.

Sango - The First Crypto Initiative so far sounds bolder and even further around the bend than El Salvador’s actual opening foray into crypto. There will be no volcanic cities but there is talk of exactly what I was asking about last month, a new Miami on the Ubangi might actually be in the works! The idea is apparently for a literal “crypto island” to match a Metaverse version to be built on an island between CAR and the DRC or somewhere along the Ubangi (details are murky). Personally, if I were going to construct a dream crypto project in CAR a safari lodge out in Dzanga-Sangha is more appealing than a sweltering high rise river fortress of casinos and nightclubs some sort of tax dodging crypto-Kurtz might inhabit, but that’s just my own LSD drenched brand of Conrad fan-fic. Seeing the progress of current construction projects in the capital though, I myself will not be putting a deposit down on any Bangui beachfront just yet. With crypto capturing the fancy of the power players who knows maybe cannabis is next? Anything is possible when everything is out the window right?