Africa Free Routing - Pitch⚡

What Is Africa Free Routing

Africa Free Routing is a Bitcoin lightning node operated by African Bitcoiners aimed at putting Africa firmly on the lightning payments map. All proceeds from the running of our node go towards Bitcoin education in Africa.

How And Why We Created Africa Free Routing

When it comes to the Lightning Network, Africa is still very far behind. Only about 0.14% of nodes in the lightning network are located in Africa. That’s pretty low for a continent that needs bitcoin the most. That’s why we decided to run a lightning node for Africa. Excitingly, we have been kindly sponsored by the amazing lightning infrastructure provider, Voltage, who also recognize the need for the lightning network to have a strong node presence in Africa. We want to make lightning payments as affordable as possible for Africans so we are a free routing node. We earn our keep by charging a fee to provide inbound liquidity to other nodes (hopefully also in Africa!).

Where We Currently Are

Africa Free Routing is only a few months old and still in “pre-launch” (because we aren’t even actually hosted in Africa yet). Already we’ve grown to 112 channels and nearly 6 BTC in capacity. On average we forward about 2 BTC weekly. We are currently still building out our network of relationships and channels and Voltage are building out their local technical infrastructure. We hope to migrate Africa Free Routing node with Voltage to an African-hosted facility before the end of 2022.