Enrolling into exclusion: African blockchain and decolonial ambitions in an evolving finance/security infrastructure

There is growing debate over whether applications of blockchain and other financial technologies (‘fintechs’) reinforce forms neo-colonial extraction that perpetuate North–South inequities or help enact decolonial ambitions across the Global South. This paper expands such discussions contributes to this special issue on ‘fintech in Africa’ by situating emerging African techno-experimentation within wider international infrastructural relations. We argue blockchain-based activities continent must be understood those also unfolding countries have been subjected sanctions varying types (China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela) European Union, United States, Nations. Our analysis traces how sanctioned are extending exclusions novel existing socio-technical conclude experiments facilitating rather than displacing a colonial finance/security infrastructure.