The readiness gap in real-world asset tokenisation for African markets
A 2026 Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study across emerging-market jurisdictions found that market participants rate tokenisation’s importance on their strategic roadmap at 4.5 out of 5 and their own organisational readiness at 4.4. Regulators in the same economies assess actual market activity at only 2.1. That 2.4-point spread, which the researchers call a “perception gap”, is the figure most cited from the study and the most commonly misread.
The common interpretation, optimistic industry versus cautious regulators, is wrong. Regulators rate tokenisation as a high strategic priority at 3.9 out of 5. They are not sceptical about the idea. They are reporting that almost nothing is happening yet. The CCAF calls this a chicken-and-egg problem: firms will not commit capital until tokenised use cases exist, and regulators are waiting for those use cases to appear before committing regulatory resources. Both sides want this. Neither can move first.
What the study covers
The survey figures rest on 24 regulators and 8 market participants. The study is broader than its survey sample: desk research across 23 jurisdictions, more than 20 semi-structured interviews, and three closed-door roundtables including one held in Kigali in March 2026. Ten of the benchmarked jurisdictions are in Sub-Saharan Africa: Botswana, Eswatini, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia. The Capital Markets Authority (Kenya), South African Reserve Bank, Securities and Exchange Commission (Ghana), Bank of Ghana and several other African regulators were contributors, not subjects. This is not an outside-in study.
What is actually tokenised, and what is not
At 28 July 2026, roughly $36.8 billion of real-world assets sit on-chain globally, excluding stablecoins. Against BCG and ADDX’s widely cited 2022 projection of $16.1 trillion by 2030, that is about 0.2 per cent of the projection with under four years to run. We covered the projection in our earlier piece on real-world asset tokenisation; the honest update is that the trajectory does not yet support it.
The more telling figure is the inversion between what emerging markets say they want to tokenise and what has actually been tokenised anywhere. In CCAF’s survey, real estate was cited by 72.2 per cent of respondents as a priority tokenisation use case, far ahead of securities at 61.1 per cent and commodities at 33.3 per cent. The regulators themselves described real estate as the “holy grail” of tokenisation in emerging markets, “while also being its hardest test case.”
On-chain, the ranking runs almost exactly in reverse. Real estate represents $202.6 million of global tokenised value, about 0.55 per cent of the total. What has scaled is what already had clean title and existing custody: US Treasury funds at approximately $16 billion in distributed value, private credit at roughly $7 billion, and commodities at about $4.5 billion.
Left series: CCAF, Tokenised Assets: Pathways for EMDEs, June 2026, Figure 7.3 (n=18). Right series: RWA.xyz category dashboards, distributed value, 28 July 2026. CCAF’s “securities” category is broader than the stocks tracker and may include government and corporate bonds. The two series are not the same universe: priority data is EMDE sentiment, on-chain values are global totals.
Left series: CCAF, Tokenised Assets: Pathways for EMDEs, June 2026, Figure 7.3 (n=18). Right series: RWA.xyz category dashboards, distributed value, 28 July 2026. CCAF’s “securities” category is broader than the stocks tracker and may include government and corporate bonds. The two series are not the same universe: priority data is EMDE sentiment, on-chain values are global totals.
Liquidity is the failure mode, not regulation
Forbes, reporting on BeInCrypto research in July 2026, found that of 1,289 tokenised assets valued above $100,000, 910 worth $32.9 billion showed zero weekly transfer activity. That is 71 per cent by count and 55 per cent by value. Sixty-two assets hold 88 per cent of total market value. Eleven products above $100 million are each held by a single address.
CCAF’s own regulators say the same thing from the demand side: “Liquidity risk is a major concern; investors may not find ready exit routes.” Early pilots “have generally struggled to attract consistent trading volume.” And the cash leg of most tokenised transactions still settles off-chain, so delivery-versus-payment does not complete on-chain. Lack of cross-platform interoperability was the highest-rated risk concern at 3.9 out of 5, ahead of market integrity, AML and consumer protection. A token with no secondary market is a worse version of the private placement it replaced.
Where African regulators have actually got to
Kenya is the cleanest illustration of the gap. The Virtual Asset Service Providers Act was gazetted on 21 October 2025 and took effect on 4 November 2025. A joint CBK and CMA public notice dated 18 November 2025 states plainly: “Currently CBK and CMA have not licensed any VASPs under the Act to operate in or from Kenya.” The implementing regulations were gazetted in July 2026, roughly nine months after the Act commenced. Under the split mandate the CMA regulates exchanges, token issuance platforms and tokenisation activities. Nine months from commencement to implementing regulations, and still no licence issued.
Nigeria has extended its securities law to tokens. The Investments and Securities Act 2025 classifies virtual assets and investment contracts as securities, and platforms must be licensed as Digital Asset Offering Platforms. In January 2026 the SEC doubled DAOP minimum capital from ₦500 million to ₦1 billion, according to TechCabal, with a compliance deadline of 30 June 2027.
South Africa has done the deepest technical work. The South African Reserve Bank completed Project Khokha 2 in 2022, a proof of concept that issued, cleared and settled SARB debentures on distributed ledger technology. CCAF records that draft regulations restricting the use and movement of tokenised assets, focused on managing capital flows, were published in April 2026.
The rest of the region is earlier than the commentary suggests. CCAF’s own heading for Sub-Saharan Africa is “uneven progress across the region”, with Ghana, Rwanda and Uganda advancing virtual-asset legislation at different stages.
The four preconditions, tested against evidence
Title. About 14 per cent of rural land area in Sub-Saharan Africa is covered by formal ownership documents, according to a peer-reviewed study using World Bank survey data across six countries. CCAF finds that in most implementations tokens reference off-chain registries that remain the legally authoritative record. Rights are secured through trusts or SPVs rather than by the ledger itself. This is the hard number behind the usual “land registries are incomplete” assertion, and it means that the asset class African markets most want to tokenise sits on the infrastructure least equipped to support it.
Identity. Nigeria’s virtual National Identification Number and Ghana’s biometric Ghana Card are working national digital identity systems that could underpin KYC for tokenised transactions. This precondition is the most nearly met in the region.
Custody and settlement. Mauritius is the regional benchmark. The FSC’s guidance notes on security token offerings, first issued in 2020 and updated through 2023, specify: security tokens must be held with an FSC-licensed custodian or a custodian regulated in an IOSCO MMOU signatory jurisdiction, fiat must be held with a licensed commercial bank in Mauritius, and settlement on a licensed trading system is T+0. Most jurisdictions have not reached this level of specificity.
Secondary market. Kenya’s KDX exchange infrastructure, built with the Nairobi Securities Exchange, exists but CCAF describes it as “experimental rather than national settlement infrastructure.” A regulator interviewed for the study was direct: “There is absolutely no interest in the government tokenising securities. We still go the hard way, the paper way.”
What a serious project looks like
TroyGold’s Krugerrand token (TGLD) on Mesh.trade, a registered South African financial services provider, launched in March 2025. Minimum investment R50, fractional to seven decimal places, gold vaulted at Brink’s in Johannesburg, insured through Lloyd’s of London, redeemable for physical Krugerrands at one full ounce. What made it possible: a standardised asset with unambiguous title, physical custody that already existed, insurance, a licensed intermediary, and a defined redemption right. It is not real estate.
The sequencing rule remains what it was in the original draft: clean title, then a legal wrapper under existing law, then custody, then a credible exit, and only then a token. Mirror off-chain rights, do not invent new ones. The same discipline that separates firms which get value from technology pilots from those which do not, a pattern we set out in moving agentic AI from pilot to production, applies here. The failure mode is identical: buying the sophisticated layer before the boring one underneath it works.
Demand for on-chain rails is not the missing ingredient. Sub-Saharan Africa received over $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, up about 52 per cent year-on-year. Nigeria alone accounted for $92.1 billion. The constraint is upstream of demand.
What would actually close the gap
Not more frameworks. Kenya shows that a framework can exist for months while nothing is licensed. The measurable signals worth watching: first licences actually issued under the Kenyan regulations, whether any African tokenised instrument sustains secondary-market volume, and whether a property registry anywhere in the region becomes the legally authoritative on-chain record rather than merely a referenced one.
On current evidence this is a five-to-ten-year infrastructure programme, not a product launch. CCAF’s researchers put it plainly: for many assets in many markets, “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.” That will change, but the gap between aspiration and activity closes through patient work on title, custody, settlement and exit, not through additional white papers on the technology itself.
Key takeaways
Market participants rate tokenisation priority and readiness at 4.5 and 4.4 out of 5; regulators rate actual activity at 2.1. The gap is between aspiration and activity, not between believers and doubters, because regulators rate tokenisation as a 3.9 strategic priority.
Real estate is the most-cited EMDE use case at 72.2 per cent and represents just 0.55 per cent of global on-chain RWA value. What has scaled, treasuries and credit, already had clean title and custody.
Most tokenised assets do not trade: 71 per cent by count showed zero weekly transfer activity. A token with no secondary market is worse than the private placement it replaced.
Kenya’s VASP Act took nine months from commencement to implementing regulations, with zero licences issued. Nigeria doubled platform capital requirements. Mauritius has the most mature framework, with specific custody and T+0 settlement rules since 2020.
About 14 per cent of Sub-Saharan rural land area is covered by formal ownership documents, which means the asset class most wanted for tokenisation sits on the infrastructure least equipped to support it.
Sub-Saharan Africa received $205 billion in on-chain value in a year. Demand for digital rails is not the missing ingredient; the constraints are title, custody, settlement and exit.
Frequently asked questions
What is the readiness gap in RWA tokenisation?
Market participants in emerging markets report high strategic priority and readiness for tokenisation (4.5 and 4.4 out of 5), while regulators in the same economies assess actual market activity at 2.1 out of 5. This is a gap between aspiration and activity, not between believers and doubters: regulators themselves rate tokenisation as a high strategic priority at 3.9 out of 5. The study, published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance in June 2026, surveyed 24 regulators and 8 market participants across 23 EMDE jurisdictions.
Which African countries have tokenisation frameworks?
Kenya’s VASP Act commenced in November 2025 with implementing regulations gazetted in July 2026. Nigeria’s ISA 2025 classifies tokens as securities and requires Digital Asset Offering Platform licensing with doubled capital requirements. South Africa completed a debenture-settlement proof of concept (Project Khokha 2) in 2022 and published draft tokenised-asset regulations in April 2026. Mauritius has the most mature regime, with FSC guidance notes on security token offerings since 2020 specifying custody, settlement and licensing requirements.
Why has tokenised real estate not scaled?
Real estate lacks the preconditions that made treasuries and credit tokenisable at scale: standardised title, clean legal ownership, and existing custody and settlement conventions. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 14 per cent of rural land area is covered by formal ownership documents. Even where issuance has been digitised, secondary trading and settlement continue through conventional channels, limiting the efficiency gains that a fully tokenised lifecycle would deliver.
Is there a live tokenised asset in Africa?
TroyGold’s Krugerrand token (TGLD) on Mesh.trade, a registered South African financial services provider, launched in March 2025 with a minimum investment of R50. It succeeded because gold has unambiguous title, physical custody already existed at Brink’s in Johannesburg, and the token carries a defined redemption right for physical Krugerrands. It is a commodity, not real estate.
What should an investor or issuer do now?
Start with the sequencing rule: clean title, then a legal wrapper under existing company, trust or securities law, then custody with a licensed intermediary, then a credible exit, and only then a token. Mirror off-chain rights rather than inventing new ones. Plan against the real secondary-market evidence: most tokenised assets globally show zero weekly transfer activity, and liquidity is the top reported concern among regulators. On current evidence, tokenisation of African real assets is a five-to-ten-year infrastructure programme rather than a near-term product opportunity.
Sources
Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), Tokenised Assets: Pathways for Emerging Market and Developing Economies, June 2026. jbs.cam.ac.uk (PDF)
Central Bank of Kenya and Capital Markets Authority, Public Notice: Commencement of the Virtual Assets Service Providers Act, 2025, 18 November 2025. centralbank.go.ke (PDF)
Financial Services Commission (Mauritius), Guidance Notes on Security Token Offerings and Security Token Trading Systems, updated 15 March 2023. fscmauritius.org (PDF)
Chainalysis, Sub-Saharan Africa Shows Strong Crypto Retail Activity, 10 September 2025. chainalysis.com
RWA.xyz dashboard, distributed asset values by category, 28 July 2026. rwa.xyz
Forbes, The Tokenized Asset Market Is $60 Billion. Most Of It Isn’t Moving, 2 July 2026, reporting BeInCrypto research. forbes.com
BCG and ADDX, Relevance of on-chain asset tokenization in ‘crypto winter’, 2022. addx.co (PDF)
Byamugisha and Dubosse, The Investment Case for Land Tenure Security in Sub-Saharan Africa, Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, 2023. cambridge.org
TechCabal, SEC doubles minimum capital for exchanges to ₦2bn, 16 January 2026. techcabal.com
Mesh, TroyGold launches tokenised gold offering on Mesh, March 2025. mesh.trade
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