Amidst backlash for adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, the Central African Republic has doubled down on its crypto position with an announcement of a crypto island project to attract global crypto enthusiasts and businesses. 

In April, CAR became the second country after El Salvador to announce Bitcoin as legal tender and this project similarly seems to be following from the El Salvador playbook. The project named Sango Island bears a striking resemblance to the El Zonte Bitcoin beach project as it seeks to link the real world with the sprouting digital Metaverse. 

A 24-page document released on Tuesday highlights how Sango will be declared a “Crypto Economic Zone” that will allow people to propose, view, and contribute to the future developments of the crypto island. 

The project is spearheaded by the Central African Republic National Assembly with the backing of President Faustin-Archange Touadera and hopes to incorporate an E-residency program with citizenship determined by investment. 

In his statement, President Touadera said, “The construction of the first legal crypto hub in the heart of Africa will improve crypto experience by taking Bitcoin adoption to the next level, potentially bringing the most unconventional space in the world.” 

Touadera added that the adoption of Bitcoin and having a crypto hub provide “unimaginable possibilities” for the country’s development and transformation as tools to redesign the future of CAR. 

“The formal economy is no longer an option,” the president reportedly noted as he emphasized that it is his greatest wish for this project to make crypto accessible to all in a positive competitive environment while tackling bureaucratic issues that have left people out of the legacy systems. 

Sango Island looks to usher in a new economic era with enormous potential by establishing a connection between aspects of the real world such as real estate and Metaverse representations in the virtual space. 

As the project expands and subsequent layers are added, CAR hopes to be able to allow users to manage their NFTs in the Metaverse and unlock additional functionalities like marketplace, ownership, funding, and tokenization of assets within Sango Island. 

According to the announcement document, Sango’s legal framework will be in place before the end of 2022 and this includes an E-residency program, citizenship by investment, online business registration, and income and corporate tax exemptions.

CAR is also to create a wallet to send, receive and store Bitcoin on the Lightning Network for cheaper and faster payments with transactions between parties that are not on the blockchain network  (off-chain transactions) also allowed to take place. 

The wallet will also be compatible with point-of-sale (PoS) for businesses to accept bitcoin payments and feature an integrated accounting system. Sango will also allow NFT minting in the Metaverse for an additional layer of business services.

Since part of the criticism CAR received for adopting Bitcoin was around the low rate of internet absorption in the country, the document also mentions plans to finalize the Central African Backbone (CAB) internet interconnection before the end of the year to power its digital transformation.

With the Sango Crypto Island, CAR hopes to give a practical international use scenario for how crypto benefits can improve the economic performance of the country.