Cook delivered the keynote at the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) International Conference on Digital Assets, held under the theme "Crypto-assets and digital innovations: opportunities and challenges for monetary and financial stability." The gathering brought together central bank governors, fintech specialists, supervisory officials, academics, and cybersecurity specialists from across the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and beyond.

The event is believed to mark the first time a sitting Federal Reserve governor has spoken at a West African central bank conference focused specifically on digital assets.

Cook disclosed a personal connection to the venue: she studied philosophy at l'Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar as a graduate student and later worked in Rwanda and East Africa in the late 1990s and early 2000s, where emerging payment technologies first drew her attention to the possibilities of financial infrastructure. Her speech, titled "Perspectives on Tokenization and Implications for the Financial System," drew on that background to frame the stakes for a region where digital financial tools are already reshaping daily commerce.

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What Cook Actually Said

Cook defined tokenization as the process of creating a digital record of a conventional asset, such as a government bond or money market fund unit, on a distributed ledger. She was careful to distinguish this from natively digital assets like Bitcoin. Her core argument was that tokenization can lower barriers to capital market participation, particularly in regions where investors have limited resources. Fractional ownership, she argued, is "particularly relevant for developing economies like those in West Africa, where savers and investors may have fewer resources to invest but where a need exists to bolster capital markets."

She pointed to smart contracts as a source of operational efficiency, noting they "can automate complex activities that currently require manual intervention, such as margin calls and collateral substitutions..."

But she balanced that with a blunt warning: automated systems also "reduce human ability to correct bugs or respond to threats," and cyberattacks remain common across decentralized finance infrastructure. On market stability, she cautioned that round-the-clock trading could accelerate a financial run, warning that "around-the-clock trading and settlement may speed up a run on the issuer if disruptions in the market for tokens outside normal market hours escalate."

Her overall position: "I do not see tokenization as replacing traditional market infrastructure."

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The Ground Reality in West Africa

Cook's institutional framing sits in tension with how tokenized value is actually moving across Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Chainalysis data, the region received more than $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52 percent increase year over year. Stablecoins (digital tokens pegged to a fiat currency, usually the US dollar) account for 43 percent of all crypto transaction volume in the region. Nigeria alone received $92.1 billion over that period, driven in part by surging demand for dollar-denominated stablecoins after naira devaluations. Retail transactions under $10,000 make up more than 8 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's crypto volume, compared with 6 percent globally, a sign that adoption runs deep at the grassroots level rather than flowing exclusively through institutional channels.

That stablecoin dominance presents a specific problem for WAEMU policymakers. The IMF noted in a 2026 research note that "the overwhelming share of stablecoins is denominated in U.S. dollars, creating currency mismatches in many" emerging and developing economies. For CFA franc-zone countries, which already operate a currency pegged to the euro, the practical substitution of USDT for local-currency transactions adds another layer of monetary sovereignty risk that Cook's speech did not directly address.

Yet the risk picture is not one-sided. The Brookings Institution has argued that "tokenization is one financial innovation race where Africa could position itself to be on par with other emerging markets, with Africa having the market and potential to go to scale much faster," a perspective that balances cautionary readings of the moment with a recognition of the continent's structural advantages.

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The Market Context

The global tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market has grown sharply. Total on-chain RWA value, excluding stablecoins, reached approximately $30.95 billion as of May 8, roughly four times its level a year ago. Tokenized US Treasuries account for around $13.4 billion of that total, with tokenized commodities (led by gold) adding another $7.3 billion.

The Federal Reserve's own estimates put the US tokenized market at about $25 billion (covering the domestic market specifically), having doubled in a year. McKinsey projects the RWA market could reach $2 trillion by 2030.

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A Regulatory Inflection Point

The BCEAO's current framework for digital financial services dates to Instruction N°008-05-2015, governing electronic money issuers, drafted well before the current tokenization cycle.

No binding WAEMU-wide legislation for virtual asset service providers currently exists, unlike Nigeria's Investment and Securities Act of 2025 or Kenya's VASP Act signed in October 2025 (West Africa's two largest Anglophone economies, both outside the WAEMU bloc).

Two days before Cook's speech, BCEAO Governor Jean-Claude Kassi Brou met with Yvon Sana Bangui, governor of the Central Bank of Central African States (BEAC), in Dakar to discuss digital transformation and payment modernization, a signal that coordination across the CFA franc zone is already in motion.

Cook sits as co-chair of the Financial Stability Board's Regional Consultative Group for the Americas and chairs the Fed's Committee on Financial Stability. Her appearance in Dakar suggests that African central banks may be drawn into the FSB's tokenization standard-setting process as active participants rather than passive recipients of guidance.

For developers building cross-border payment infrastructure or tokenized trade finance tools in Francophone West Africa, the Fed's presence at the table offers a form of institutional validation for the underlying thesis. It also previews the kind of audit requirements, upgrade mechanisms, and run-risk disclosures that any protocol seeking regulatory engagement in the region may need to demonstrate.

The Brookings Institution has estimated a $331 billion SME financing gap across Africa, and Cook's remarks may open a credible policy pathway toward tokenized solutions for trade finance and invoice discounting at regional scale.