In a move that industry watchers are calling a turning point for Africa’s digital asset landscape, the Ghana Chapter of the Chamber of Digital Assets and Blockchain Innovations and Kenya’s Virtual Assets Chamber of Commerce have signed a formal partnership agreement to create what they describe as an East-West African Digital Asset Corridor.
The memorandum of understanding, signed on April 14 but announced jointly on April 22, establishes a three-year framework for collaboration across five critical areas: regulatory alignment, policy development, knowledge and capacity building, joint research, and thought leadership. The partnership is renewable by mutual agreement and is non-exclusive, leaving both chambers free to pursue other institutional alliances.
For Ghana, the agreement deepens its emerging role as a West African hub for virtual asset governance. CDABI already holds formal engagement channels with the Bank of Ghana, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Virtual Assets Department, and GIABA, the inter-governmental anti-money laundering body for West Africa. Through this new pact, Ghana’s industry voice gains a direct line to East Africa’s policymaking conversations, and vice versa.
Caleb Kwaku Afaglo, President of CDABI Ghana Chapter, struck a defiant tone in announcing the partnership. “Africa must stop being a spectator in the drafting of global virtual asset standards,” he said. “This partnership between CDABI and VACC is our declaration that the continent is ready to lead from the front.”
His counterpart at VACC, Director Bill Okello, emphasised the practical stakes. “Our focus is on helping create a more credible, better-connected, and professionally grounded ecosystem,” Okello said. “One that supports innovation while strengthening standards, regulatory dialogue, and market confidence across borders.”
The most immediately tangible pillar of the agreement is knowledge and capacity development. CDABI brings to the table its existing joint AML and crypto compliance certification programme developed with the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, or GIMPA. That qualification is a four-level, 31-module, 264-contact-hour professional programme anchored to FATF standards and GIABA guidelines. VACC, for its part, brings its East African practitioner network and its own partnership with the AML Certification Centre. Together, the two chambers will explore curriculum sharing, mutual recognition of certifications, and joint cohort delivery.
Beyond training, the partnership creates a formal joint policy development function. Both chambers will collaborate on drafting evidence-based virtual asset policies and submit them to regulators in Ghana and Kenya, as well as to regional and international bodies including GIABA, FATF, the African Union, and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion. The aim is to ensure that African industry practitioners are present and influential in every major policy conversation affecting the digital asset sector.
The research mandate is equally significant. CDABI and VACC will co-produce research on market trends, regulatory developments, compliance challenges, and emerging risks across both jurisdictions and beyond. These outputs will be branded as products of the East-West African Digital Asset Corridor, giving both institutions a shared intellectual property platform and amplifying their collective authority.
CDABI already has a flagship publication in its West Africa Digital Asset Harmonisation Report series, which has produced three volumes to date examining regulatory frameworks across ECOWAS member states. The fourth volume, scheduled for later this year, will incorporate the East African dimension opened up by this partnership.
VACC, meanwhile, is preparing to host a closed-door session with regulators from several African countries at the Kenya Blockchain and Crypto Conference 2026 in Nairobi on May 14 and 15. That session will focus on interoperability, compliance, regulatory alignment, market infrastructure, and capacity building, themes that sit at the very centre of the new CDABI-VACC framework.
For market participants, the partnership promises clearer engagement and better access to context-specific insight. For policymakers, it offers an additional platform for constructive dialogue with credible ecosystem bodies. And for the wider market, it signals a commitment to responsible growth, professionalisation, and a more coordinated African digital asset landscape.
The agreement runs for an initial term of three years and was formally signed on April 14. Its public announcement on April 22 comes just over two months after CDABI held its inaugural Ghana Virtual Assets and Financial Services Symposium in Accra on February 17, where the CDABI-GIMPA certification programme was formally launched. That symposium is now positioned as an annual checkpoint for regulatory developments and industry readiness, with the next edition planned for 2027.
As digital assets increasingly move from informal adoption toward structured market development, institutions such as CDABI and VACC are positioning themselves as indispensable intermediaries. This partnership suggests that Africa’s approach to virtual assets will not be dictated from Washington, Brussels, or Beijing. It will be written in Accra and Nairobi first.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh