Dash’s outreach has expanded to Cameroon, bringing a new region and language to the successful African outreach projects.

The #Dash4Nigeria group, which has expanded outreach locally since last summer, held its first meetup in neighboring Cameroon this month in an effort to break into this new market, as well as establish a foothold in the francophone African countries. A meetup was held with a presentation via Skype session, including a question and answer period, to a small group of 11 attendees. Additionally, Dash ambassadors were able to present at a seminar with an audience of 29.

According to Dash ambassador Nathaniel Luz, Cameroon can profit from Dash by avoiding severe government regulations and complications with international currency transfers:

“Cameroon is a country in Central Africa that suffers from extreme government regulations. The liberty of the citizens are reduced including economic freedom. Cameroon is bilingual and shares a land border with Nigeria, making it easy for us to reach out to them. To get the value of exchange for both currencies, the dollar is the yardstick. Individuals also leave their country to work in the other and send money home periodically.”

Cross-border and cross-currency payments can prove difficult and expensive, especially for remittances, with a variety of services required to perform the exchange. Leveraging Dash can keep the same low fees for transfers anywhere, and a local Dash economy can deal with the problem of currency exchanges.

Dash’s potential for expansion in Cameroon

While Cameroon has had some exposure to Bitcoin in the past, recent high fees and slow confirmation times has made its use as a currency extremely difficult across the whole world, a disadvantage that is only amplified in African countries. Dash offers similar advantages, except without the inconvenient transactions, opening up a strong potential for growth in the region.

According to Luz, locals in Cameroon have taken interest in Dash due to its long-term increase in valuation:

“There’s a great demand to hold Dash as some form of investment. This is due to the increase in value as seen from the chart on Coinmarketcap.com and an increased acceptance of Dash thus far.”

Dash could be poised for rapid growth as a currency in Cameroon as Luz believes that its use in payments, combined with its funding and wide-reaching team, can lead to an increase in adoption:

“Most of the people have heard about Bitcoin and done a couple of transactions with it. However, there’s the opportunity of Dash been the most popular cryptocurrency in Cameroon soon. This is due to amazing features such as low fees, speed of transaction, easy to use mobile application and a dedicated team ready to put them through the process of accepting and adopting Dash.”

As always with entry into a new developing market, liquidity is an issue, and there are few local options to buy Dash. Luz sees a barrier to growth being the ease of acquiring Dash, and has taken temporary measures to help grow liquidity in the local markets, with more long-term solutions planned:

“Thus far, I’m creating a plan that allows me send Dash to them and they send back Bitcoin, then I ShapeShift back to Dash, bearing the costs. However, I see this as just a short term solution. For the medium term, we plan on getting existing local Bitcoin traders to begin trading Dash. Then we expand from there. The community should keep an eye on this project as it’s success would see Dash spread to other Central African countries like wildfire.”

Dash’s surge across underbanked regions

Dash has had significant success in expanding to regions of the world with banking and currency problems. Last fall, Dash outreach had already reached five different African countries, followed by the establishment of a successful direct giving program to combat extreme poverty. Venezuela, which has faced currency and economic hardships as well, has been a recent hotbed of Dash adoption thanks to a highly-organized and motivated team, with thousands learning about Dash and nearly 100 merchants accepting it as payment.