A Peter Thiel-Backed Startup City Wants to Be Africa’s Delaware (www.wired.com)

The Central Bank of Nigeria banned banks from enabling cryptocurrency transactions in February 2021.

Adesoji Adesugba, CEO of the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority, said in a statement that the partnership with Binance seeks to engender flourishing Virtual Free Zones to take advantage of a near trilliondollar virtual economy in blockchains and digital economy.

Its clear that the world is going crypto, says Edu. And Nigeria can’t lock that door forever. Incoming president Bola Ahmed Tinubus manifesto appears to echo this, saying that his administration will reform government policy to encourage the prudent use of blockchain technology.

While developing its digital infrastructure is Itanas main preoccupation right now, building the physical city might not be simple, judging from the experience of nearby development projects.

Building a new, highend community like Itana isnt likely to solve those problems in the near term.

What I can tell is that it’s not going to be cheap, says Yakubu Aliyu Bununu, lecturer in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria.If you look at the purchasing power of an average Nigerian, it’s going to take them years and years to be able to earn an income that would allow them to live in Eko Atlantic, or Alaro City, or any of the cities springing up in that area, says Adunbi. (Alaro City, where Itana is due to be located, advertises residences pricedfrom 65,950 the average yearlyincome for Nigerians was 2,080 in 2021.)

But Aboyeji says Itanas goal isnt to cloister the affluent in airconditioned highrises. We’re not just trying to get together a bunch of opulent, rich people into a space, right

Local residents say more than a dozen villages in the IbejuEpe area, where the free trade zone was established, have been unilaterally reclaimed by the government, some to make way fora notyetoperational oil refinery which started construction in 2016.

They said they wanted to use the land for revenue purposes, that there was no refinery in Lagos state, so they were planning for our children, Otunba Ladipo Olusanya Adeokun, a community leader of the Idashon Community in Ibeju Lekki, says. What about us who will bear the children, are we not going to plan for our future