Emerging markets across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America are adopting blockchain and digital assets out of necessity rather than ideology and that economic pragmatism will shape the next phase of Web3 and artificial intelligence adoption, according to Yasmina Boubnider Kazitani, Co-President of the Blockchain Game Alliance.
Speaking in an interview with Yellow.com, Kazitani said that the global balance of digital innovation is shifting toward younger, faster-growing populations that view blockchain less as a disruptive experiment and more as a financial lifeline.
“Emerging market populations under 18 are probably two-thirds of the world,” she said.
“In the UK in the next 20 years, the aging population will outnumber the young. In Saudi, it’s the opposite — 70 percent will be under 30. The consumer base is shifting, and policy must catch up,” she said.
Kazitani pointed out that Western regulators and institutions often design digital policy through a domestic lens, overlooking how demographic and economic pressures drive innovation elsewhere.
“We adopted blockchain because of necessity, not because we liked the technology,” she said.
“In places like Nigeria or Argentina, people turn to digital assets because their money devalues monthly. They can’t afford gold or real estate. Blockchain becomes a practical store of value, not a philosophical one,” she added.
She argued that this difference in motivation explains why adoption patterns differ between developed and developing economies. “People in emerging markets don’t see blockchain as liberation. They see it as survival,” she said. “Peer-to-peer transactions are faster and more reliable than banking systems that take ten days to process remittances. The West often mistakes this necessity for speculation,” she further said.
According to Kazitani, the lack of education and awareness remains one of the biggest barriers to blockchain’s mainstream adoption globally. “Blockchain has a bad PR,” she said.
“>People see that blockchain is crypto, crypto is blockchain, and for them, that’s the first confusion.”
She added that the industry’s focus should shift from token speculation to building better infrastructure.
“From my perspective, I’m not protecting the games. I’m protecting the infrastructure of the game when it comes to ownership and digital assets,” she said.
On artificial intelligence, Kazitani said it should be viewed as an “assistant, not a replacement.”
As a multilingual professional, she explained how generative AI tools have helped her articulate ideas more clearly in English.
“It’s my assistant rather than it does a job for me,” she said. “I tell my kids the same thing, it’s not going to think on your behalf. You have to think and be a critical thinker.”
Looking ahead, Kazitani said the next five years of digital transformation will depend on regulatory stability and global politics.
“If we don’t have a war within the next 24 months, the change will come easily from the perspective of DeFi,” she said, noting that financial decentralization will likely move closer to traditional regulation.
“What makes DeFi quicker to adopt is the gamification behind it,” she added. “When you’re playing or doing something, you don’t see the technology, it just happens. That’s when people truly understand it.”
For Kazitani, the long-term trajectory of blockchain adoption will hinge less on hype and more on maturity.
“The maturity of an industry is very important,” she said. “Now people are asking, ‘What’s the business model? What’s next?’ It’s not just about freedom or community anymore, it’s about substance and sustainability,” she said.
