Half a Million People, Zero Banks – How Kibera Runs on Bitcoin

Ronnie Mdawida joins Crack the Orange to share how AfriBit Kibera is building one of Africa’s most inspiring grassroots Bitcoin circular economies – right inside Kibera, the largest informal settlement on the continent, home to more than 500,000 people. What started in 2019 as a Bitcoin education project for university students has grown into a thriving community of waste collectors, merchants, boda boda riders, and women-led upcycling groups who earn, spend, and save in sats. In this conversation, Ronnie explains how the project bootstrapped without aid dependency, why education came before onboarding, and how trust, not technology, turned out to be the real unlock. Joined by community members Cyrus (Usafi Boys Initiative) and Mercy Aloo (merchant facilitator & upcycling lead), this epi