For years, tokenization lived mostly inside crypto. In 2026 it moved into the back offices of some of the largest financial institutions in the world. That changes the question for everyone else, including property in Africa. It is no longer whether tokenization will happen. It is where it works first, and why.
A quiet shift on Wall Street
On 15 July, DTCC began limited production trades of tokenized securities. DTCC’s depository subsidiary holds about $114 trillion of securities in custody. JPMorgan was among the first to take part, tokenizing part of its holdings in an Invesco fund. A full launch is planned for October. Behind the service is a working group of more than fifty firms, including BlackRock, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq and NYSE Group.
The detail that matters most is the design, not the names. Each token is backed one to one by a security that DTC already holds, and DTC remains the authoritative record keeper. The token does not replace the books. It mirrors them, and DTC keeps the ability to pause or reverse a token if it needs to.
The pattern: mirror a record you already trust
Look at what the institutions chose to tokenize first: US Treasuries, shares of large companies and major funds. These assets share one feature. Who owns them is already recorded digitally, in systems that everyone trusts. A token can mirror a record that already exists.
That is why Treasuries came before almost everything else. It is also why property, one of the largest asset classes in the world, is still under 1% of tokenized value by most trackers counts.
The lesson is simple. Tokenization does not create trust. It carries trust that already exists.
Where property stands
For property, the question is whether the record exists. The World Bank’s global land lead said in May that only about 35% of land rights worldwide are formally documented. About $60 trillion of land assets cannot be put to economic use, because informal holdings cannot be used as collateral. Registered land is, on average, 30% more valuable than unregistered land.
More than two-thirds of countries now run a digital land registry, according to the same remarks. But a digital registry is not the same as a complete one, or a connected one.
Who is already trying
The early attempts begin with the registry, not the token. Dubai Land Department piloted tokenization on title deeds together with the emirate’s virtual assets regulator, and moved to a second phase in February 2026. Georgia signed a memorandum with Hedera in December 2025 to explore moving land registry data onchain. That one is still at the exploration stage.
Africa’s place
Africa does not start from one place. It starts from several, and some are further along than people assume.
Rwanda: build the record first, then write the rules
Rwanda is a useful example because it did the unglamorous part first. Between 2009 and 2013 its land tenure programme registered around ten million parcels. Electronic land titles replaced printed certificates in January 2023, and transactions that do not need a land notary can be completed online, including by Rwandans abroad.
Then came the rules. Rwanda’s virtual asset law, published in the Official Gazette on 28 May 2026, makes the Capital Market Authority the lead regulator. Tokenizing a real-world asset requires its approval. The tokens must be fully collateralized, the asset must be valued by a qualified valuer, and it must be ring-fenced. Some assets, such as public infrastructure, are excluded. Detailed rules are still to come.
Rwanda also shows the other side of the work. One study cited by the Centre for Public Impact found that only 1.8% of land transactions were formally registered in 2015 to 2016, because many sales and inheritances continued informally. A record is only as useful as it is current. Building it is one job. Keeping it alive is another.
Regulators are asking the right questions
Rwanda is not alone. Regulators in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Mauritius have each begun to bring digital assets under a framework. Ghana’s 2025 law gives its Securities and Exchange Commission responsibility for tokenization, and the Commission runs a sandbox for new projects. On 2 and 3 November it hosts the Africa Virtual Asset Summit in Accra, themed on tokenization, with participants expected from more than thirty countries and a proposed Accra Declaration on shared principles. The second day covers tokenizing real estate.
The questions regulators are beginning to ask are the right ones: who holds legal title, how the asset is valued, whether it is kept separate from the operator’s other business.
The demand is already here
According to Chainalysis data, reported by Tech.Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, up about 52% on the year before. Part of that reflects currency pressure as much as enthusiasm. It still shows that people across the region are already comfortable using digital rails.
What we are hearing on the ground
In our conversations with owners and regulators, two things stand out.
Owners are keen to understand how the ownership record operates. That curiosity is a good sign. The people who ask how a system works are the ones who will hold it to account.
Regulators are receptive when it comes to learning about new technology. The summit in Accra is one example of how much appetite there is to learn in the open.
What to look for
If you are weighing a tokenized asset in Africa, whether property or anything else, three things matter more than the technology:
* The record. Is there a trusted, current record of who owns the asset, and does the token mirror it?
* The rules. Does a regulator have a framework for tokenized assets, and does it ask about legal title, valuation and separation from the operator?
* The structure. How is the asset held, what does a token give its holder, and how are decisions made?
The honest answer today is that these are not yet in place everywhere. That is the opportunity as much as the challenge.
Where Oaksvale fits
At Oaksvale we are designing our platform around this pattern. The property and its legal ownership stay where the law puts them. The on-chain record is designed to sit alongside, representing each owner’s units. We are building it to work with land registries as they digitize.
Closing thought
The institutions have shown how tokenization works. For Africa, the opportunity is not to copy the technology. It is to build the record behind the asset, and to write the rules that keep it honest. Where that record exists, tokenization can carry it. Where it does not yet, building it is the work worth doing.
Tokenization carries trust. It does not create it.
Sources: DTCC (May 2026) · The Block (15 July) · DeFiprime · Polity, World Bank remarks (May 2026) · Dubai Land Department · Finance Magnates (Georgia) · Centre for Public Impact (Rwanda land reform) · Top Africa News (Rwanda e-Title) · Andersen Rwanda (virtual asset law) · MyJoyOnline (Accra summit) · Tech.Africa (Chainalysis figures) · Techmoonshot (African regulation overview)
