Excerpt
I sit down with Marcel Lorraine, founder of Bitcoin Dada, to explore how Bitcoin is empowering women in Kenya. We discuss the challenges women face, like lack of inheritance rights, discrimination, and how Bitcoin offers a lifeline to financial independence. It’s an inspiring look at how technology can break social barriers.
Transcript
We’re on our way to the center of Nairobi to meet Marcel Lorraine. Marcel is the founder of Bitcoin Dada, an organization that is educating women about Bitcoin. She’s also the founder of Dada Devs, which you might guess already is an organization that is focused on educating females to become Bitcoin developers, which I believe is very, very important, especially in countries like Kenya or other African countries, but also globally. We need more female developers to bring their perspectives into Bitcoin. Marcel, you are the founder of Bitcoin Dada and now also Dada Devs, yes? Yes. Can you please explain to our viewers what Bitcoin Dada is? Okay, so basically, Bitcoin Dada is a nonprofit organization that is focused on empowering the African female through financial education, and we leverage on Bitcoin to do that. Basically, we chose – or rather, I chose – Bitcoin because it’s fully decentralized. We do not need permission to actually participate in the financial landscape. So, Bitcoin gives a chance to a lot of women to break barriers that they have been facing since childhood. Yeah. What are these problems and challenges they are facing here in Kenya? Okay, so the biggest challenge, I would say, is discrimination, you know, economy-wise, education-wise. And this is stemming from long-standing traditions as well as societal norms. The moment you’re born a female or a girl, there are certain expectations and certain opportunities that you cannot get just because you’re female. It can start from as basic a need as education, which will also, in turn, affect things like property rights as well. Females cannot own – or not really own – inherit property from their families. And when you see the ripple effect of lack of education, then that means you do not have access to, maybe, formal financial networks as well because your education is limited, right? So you see a lot of women getting to – maybe the highest education will be probably high school. There are few who’ve gotten to university, which is good. But also in the workspace, there’s a salary gap, right? The moment you’re female – and I think this is a global problem – you can be doing the same job but you’re getting probably 30% less than the male counterpart. You’re getting 40% less than the male counterpart. And again, this, in turn, manifests in you owning your own wealth. It kind of limits you from what you can be able to do, and lack of financial ability will limit how you live your life as well. Yeah. So you get poor living conditions, you don’t have access to proper healthcare, and so many other things that we consider basic but to the African female become a challenge. And the problem with that is, we might not see it as a big deal because we’re just discriminating against a certain minority, but then a certain minority is 50–51% of the population. But then, when you look at it from the larger, you know, point of view, then you see we cannot be able to break the cycles of poverty that we have. Because, like you said, 51% is depending on – not the 50 – the 49% because not every man is financially stable to actually take care of his family. So, basically, we have a 51% depending on probably 10%, which will strain the resources of that particular family. So we’ll have the continuous cycles of poverty year in, year out. But Bitcoin is sort of like a lifeline. It changes the narrative for us. It gives us a new opportunity, a new tool that we can change this – not just for the females, but for generations and societies. Yeah. You told me once that, as you said, women are not allowed to inherit here. Yes. So you never have any securities to be able to go to a bank to apply for a loan for your business, for instance. So you’re always depending on your male counterpart – your husband or partner or whatever – or your father. Yes. And then you also told me that there are women who are expected – or everyone, all the youth, is expected to pay for their parents. Exactly. So women are not allowed to inherit but they have to pay every month, contribute to the father or the family, although they never will get anything from it. Exactly, exactly. And when you look at it, it’s quite unfortunate because if I’m paying the black tax, then I should be able to also have an opportunity to inherit whatever is coming from my family. Because it doesn’t make sense. It’s like you’re taxing me, but at the end of it, I don’t see the benefits of whatever I’m doing. And men also get the black tax, but at least, at the end of the day, if your family has property, then you get to inherit that. You get to have a collateral that you can actually, you know, improve your financial status. But as a female, unless you work hard, that you have your own money, that you decide, “Okay, now I’m going to buy my land or whatever asset,” then you don’t stand a chance of actually getting credit from the bank without any of that. So again, it’s seen in the lives of many women. You’re kind of stagnating, you know, you’re stuck, because there’s a lot of barriers pulling you back. You want to achieve something, but you don’t have access to whatever that can get you to the next level. Yeah. And then there are a lot of people then in Europe or in the US who say, yes, but you can’t give those poor women or people here access to Bitcoin. They will lose a lot of money because of the volatility and other things. What do you say to things like that? I think first is to educate themselves about Bitcoin. So that’s the one thing, because I feel the majority of people who say that their mental state is just on HODL, you know, save and in 10 years, 20 years, you might become rich. But for us in the African landscape, it’s not just about saving your money in Bitcoin, which is good, right? But at the end of the day, we are looking at how do we transfer value from one person to the next? We are dealing with cross-border remittances as well. We’re dealing with people who want to make, you know, move value from one particular person. You know, we’re dealing with, like you said, being able to actually accumulate wealth without necessarily having to get it from somebody else. So with Bitcoin, it gives us an opportunity not just to start accumulating wealth, but being able to accumulate that wealth with as low as $1. The problem with other assets is I have to wait to have probably like $5,000, $10K to actually be able to say, maybe I can think of buying a piece of land in the village. But Bitcoin, I don’t have to have that much money. So I can start with my small business, maybe in the market, I can start buying from as low as $1. And probably the next, by the time my kids, if any, are older, I can transfer that wealth to them. So for us, volatility doesn’t really play a big role when making certain decisions. Especially when you see the inflation in all of these African countries. Exactly. A good example is Malawi. They had, you know, their currency debased or devalued by 40% overnight. No explanation given. So, you wake up one day, your salary has gone down by 40%. Your savings have gone down by 40%. And this fiat will never go up. It will always go down. So there’s no possibility that you’ll wake up one day, the value of your fiat has gone to 120%. Compared to Bitcoin, I’d rather opt for Bitcoin than that type of currency. Same to Nigeria, right? So people like to say that the Kenyan currency is, the fiat is a bit stable, but that’s not the case. If you look at, you know, the graph, it’s always been going down. Between 2008 to, I think 2008 to 2024, it has gone down by 50%. So you’ve been saving from 2008, or if you’ve been receiving the same salary, you’re less 50%. And this is the reason why we’re seeing people migrating from urban centers to rural centers, because the salaries cannot be able to actually, you know, help them sustain the kind of lifestyle that they want or they have been living. And also the increase of taxes as well is a major, major problem. Yeah. I know. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much for these explanations. How many women have you had from the start on in your program? Okay. So I started with about 20 females who were just all of my friends. Right now, we have gone to 11 different countries in Africa, and we’ve trained over 500 females who’ve gone through Bitcoin Dada. The good thing about that is, we don’t end at just teaching them what is Bitcoin, right? We go through the process of mentoring them, helping them to either get employment in the space or actually build solutions that can help us as Africans. Yeah. Or even just start their own projects, whether it’s education, creativity, or building an app. Yeah.
