UBRICA

for High quality life-science and health-production in Africa.

Barbara Kimani

It is an acronym that stands for Ustawi Biomedical Research Innovation and Industrial Centers of Africa. Ustawi too, is an acronym in itself which stands for US to Africa wealth initiative which already depicts Ubrica’s focus in promoting wealth in Africa. Ubrica is a life science and health production organization whose main objective is to promote health in Kenya by eradicating poverty. It has three main pillars which are the Smart contract pillar, Human engagement pillar and the Ubrica projects.

UBRICA’S IMPACT ON HEALTH

This is the smart contract pillar, a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate and enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. Ubrica has introduced a digital coin known as the Ubricoin which is a utility token for global health built on blockchain. A utility token is digital asset of cryptocurrency that funds development of the cryptocurrency and ensures future access to services and products by an organization.

Blockchain is a digital transaction platform which allows movement of digital assets like the Ubricoin. Blockchain technology is the new and improved way of transferring funds. It uses a peer-to-peer system (Nakamoto, 2008) which typically means direct transfer of funds from one person to another without a trusted third party for example the bank. Blockchain is more preferred compared to the traditional way of sending money through the bank because it is fast, cheaper and removes possibility of corruption or fraud due to its openness to the public.

The Ubricoin has several uses which include:

• Ensuring access to the Ubrica ecosystem
• Supporting development and implementation of Ubrica projects
• Shop on the online retail store known as Soko Janja
• Helping gather intelligent data about health, nutrition information and diseases.

UBRICA’S ECONOMIC IMPACT

This is the human engagement pillar. In Kenya, there are very many talented individuals who have ventured into various fields for example farming and pottery, who do not have any market for their products. This means that these people cannot make money to sustain themselves and their loved ones. In times of crisis such as occurs when a disease like cholera or typhoid strikes, these hard workers do not have enough money to pay for adequate healthcare. When they visit health centers, clinics or hospitals, the caregivers — doctors and nurses — are forced to provide low standard health services to reduce the cost of service.

Ubrica understand that economic development is the greatest cause of improvement of health. With this in mind, Ubrica came up with an online retail store called Soko Janja. In this platform, any Kenyan can advertise and expand market for their products, for free. With adequate market, Kenyans can now make enough money to improve their living standard and enable them to pay for quality healthcare.

UBRICA IMPACTS TO THE COMMUNITY

Ubrica aims at improving the lives of all Kenyans as a whole. For the productive and highly talented youth, Ubrica aims at building University Science and Technology parks also knows as research parks. These will be built in close proximity with the 66 universities in Kenya. Their purpose will be to facilitate sharing of knowledge through qualitative and quantitative research, creation and development of new ideas and the selling of the products that the youth will come up with.

The other project is known as the Ubrica Retail Clinical Centers (URCCs) which will contain a retail store, workshop and clinical centers. The retail center is where a manufacturer for example, a farmer takes his produce and can sell or supply to the general public. The same manufacturer can take his products to the workshop for repackaging and repurposing of his products.

Through selling of the products, the manufacture now has enough money to access the clinical centers which are based within the same area as the workshops and retail centers. This will greatly improve the quality of care given and make a huge impact on people’s health.

THE REWARD SYSTEM

• Incentives (rewards) will be issued in form of brevises (points) to those who shop at Soko Janja which can be translated to Ubricoins.
• A system will be introduced whereby Ubricoin holders will be able to rate the quality of service provided.

University students will be able to rate their professors based on how they teach, their class attendance and student engagement. In the same way, professors will be able to rate their students based on their class attendance, performance and class participation.

Similarly, primary school and high school teachers will be rewarded according to their performance and they’ll also rate their students leading to the best performance, hard work and commendable attendance being rewarded.

Doctors too will be able to rate their patients depending on how regular they go for checkups. Patients can also rate the doctors according to the service provided.

• Those working in the university science and technology parks will be rewarded based on their performance. Those with comprehensive research work will receive incentives in form of Ubricoins.
• Tokens will be offered to people who hold the coin in their wallet.

Ubrica is interested in improving the quality of health in Kenya by bettering the country’s economy.

Originally published at Ubrica World Cafe (UWC)