Paper Abstract:

Community currencies (CCs) operate alongside national currencies to promote local economic development by fostering internal circulation. CCs have been adopting financial technology to overcome implementational hurdles from issuing paper currencies. This thesis aimed to examine their digital transition using Sarafu Network in Kenya as a case study. Sarafu, which began with paper vouchers in 2010, transitioned to digital in 2016 and blockchain operations in 2018. The study utilizes two frameworks to address the objective. First is the concept of money workwith roots from financial anthropology and sociology, i.e., the hidden labor behind successful financial transactions that used to contextualize the financial journeys of the chamas or lending groups. Second is the affordances lens from Human-Computer Interaction literature to analyze how each voucher format shaped user agency. Across a 2-month immersion from March-May 2024, the study employed a combination of participant observation, key informant interviews, workshops and focus group discussions with a host of stakeholders from chamas, developers and field officers. The findings show that the transition improved the facilitation of the chama’s economic activities–both their typical market transactions as well as traditional reciprocal labor exchanges, by offering more functionalities compared to the analog version of Sarafu Network. The study also finds that there is an inherent trade-off between the affordances and self-governance. Hence, balancing innovation and community needs remains a challenge. Tradeable vouchers via a decentralized exchange as a new functionality afforded by blockchain also raises questions about CC’s territorial nature and implications for local development.