A Chat With The CEO of Sankore The First NEAR Guild in Kenya
Kevin Imani is the CEO of Sankore 2.0 (S2), the first NEAR guild to take off in Kenya. With a background in African studies and philosophy, and experience in digital entrepreneurship, Kevin is committed to fostering regional development in East Africa, a place that has a special sentimental value to him. This short excerpt is just an overview of Kevin’s journey with NEAR and Sankore. To learn more about Kevin and Sankore you can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and check out Sankore’s Website.
A Passion For Technology and a Love For Africa
Kevin is a young Oxford graduate and entrepreneur that started off his first affiliated online business when he was only 22. His first project called Dreamed Lifestyle focused on empowering creative entrepreneurs to leverage the digital economy through access to webinars, and content on developing successful e-commerce strategies.
Born in Nairobi, Kevin spent most of his life in Belgium, where he obtained his degree in philosophy and completed an internship at the organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States. Being part of the African diaspora in Europe, made him develop a desire to learn more about Africa and to be engaged with its development.
“Of course I have an emotional attachment to Africa as I still have family and friends there and I feel a personal commitment to give my own contribution to its growth and success”.
After he obtained his Master degree in African Studies at Oxford, Kevin began his quest to grow regional economies in Africa; a quest that led him straight into blockchain technology.
“My desire to contribute to Africa’s development grew after studying Sub Saharan anthropology and history, and really stimulated me to look for technological possibilities that could help regional development in Africa. After some time spent researching, being in contact with people working in crypto, and learning more about blockchain technology, it became evident to me that the introduction of blockchain solutions in the African continent would be a game changer for economic growth. But it can also help address other critical issues for African people. One clear example is given by remittance money which constitute 40% of the income of most African families. Blockchain solutions can remove intermediaries that make it very expensive for people to send money to their families as well as faster and more transparent. African people have difficulties to trust institutions, if we can provide them with services that do not require to interface with banks and other institutions they will have much more economic freedom and peace of mind.”
Once Kevin realised the opportunities that blockchain could introduce into the African continent one more step was needed: find the right blockchain protocol.
NEAR Protocol And Sankore’s Birth
In 2020, Kevin became acquainted with NEAR Protocol and its guild program, and it did not take long for him to recognise the opportunity at hand to kickstart a project for regional development in Africa. NEAR displayed all the characteristics that would make it successful in the African continent:
“NEAR is a Layer 1 that allows for a wide range of applications to be built on top of it. And is also the most scalable solution available at the moment and that is really what we need in Africa. It has a vibrant ecosystem, a lot of cool applications built on it, is in the top 40 for market cap, so it offers a very great environment for developers and users. And I believe that NEAR’s track record shows clearly that it is a reliable protocol that people can trust and that also helps to make it very successful in Kenya”.
It was clear to Kevin that NEAR was well positioned to be successful in Africa but also to have a real impact on the continent:
“Something that makes NEAR particularly suitable for the African continent is its user-friendliness and tools that facilitate developers in building applications on top of it. Another big advantage of NEAR is that it provides tools such as NEAR Academy and the NEAR Certified Developer Program to new developers and those that want to transition from Web2. The introduction of these programs in Kenya will open up more opportunities for young people to get access to knowledge and skills that will make them better equipped for building Web3 applications”.
After learning about NEAR and discovering the guild program, Kevin started brainstorming on how to introduce NEAR to Africa and establish a community of developers. The key to do that soon manifested: establish in a local community, start offering educational programs to developers, and create educational content for the wider public. And a few months down the road Sankore 2.0 was born.
Sankore: An Incubator For The Next Generation of Web3 Developers
Named after Africa’s oldest educational institution, Sankore is trying to foster regional development through education on Web3 solutions, startup promotion, developer recruitment, and more. It is soon going to open up a hub in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the friendliest countries in Africa when it comes to crypto regulations.
“What Sankore is trying to do is to educate people on blockchain and provide solutions. Concretely, we are trying to build a community of developers and we are trying to build this community by teaching them how to code onto a blockchain. So, what we are trying to do is to build an in-house transfer of skills to really foster the birth of creative solutions in Africa.”
Africa is the youngest and fastest growing continent in the world, and it is also a place where young people are becoming increasingly tech savvy and eager for opportunities. By providing education and the infrastructure to build new applications it would ignite the engines of an economic revolution.
“Another thing that we want to do through workshops and webinars is to provide an education for the larger population within our audience, which is basic education on what blockchain is, what crypto is, what decentralisation is etc..so they can understand the implications that this technology can have in their lives in tangible ways.”
Education of the wider public is essential to really drive mass adoption and dispel the prejudices that are still often attached to crypto.
Education is the core pillar of Sankore, however, Sankore is also involved in creating and spreading solutions to address climate change.
“The second pillar of Sankore is providing solutions for climate change, something that is particularly important for the African continent, as it is one of the most vulnerable one to climate change. We are trying to do that in partnership with OFP (Open Reforestation Protocol) , a blockchain based solution that allows to monitor and record environmental data, most specifically forest data and activity.”
Climate change is a topic that many Africans worry about. Africa is expected to be one of the hardest hit countries from climate change, and introducing solutions to mitigate its effects is of crucial importance. And is something that Sankore is highly committed to addressing.
A Look Into The Future of Sankore
Sankore only launched a few months ago but its work is already gaining traction in Nairobi. Sankore has now established a partnership with BitHub Africa, the biggest crypto community in Kenya, to train developers. It is establishing a shared office space in Nairobi, is building partnerships with local news companies, and is soon going to launch webinars, and workshops.
“In the short term we will keep working on growing the community, create a network in Nairobi, do seminars and create educational content. Long term, what I would really see happening in Kenya for Sankore is to expand outside of Nairobi. Part of our audience is outside of the capital so what we want to see happening in the next few years is to have different communities with devs and entrepreneurs that received training in Nairobi and spread their knowledge across different parts of the country. In this way we can create a chain of developers and instructors that spread the knowledge in a sustainable way. This is the ecosystem that I think we can actualise in the next few years”.
There are many things to look forward to. The time is ripe for Kenya to grow into a Silicon Savannah and Sankore, together with NEAR, is going to bring this future into reality.
To learn more about Kevin and Sankore you can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and check out Sankore’s Website.
LaDevochka is a writer for 4NTS Guild. You can check out their Medium for more content or follow them on Twitter.
