Why Is Cardano Important for Africa?
Often regarded as one of the main innovations that is driving the next industrial revolution. Today, African nations are constantly looking to improve the state of their industry and government with the blockchain technology. We can actually safely see few countries like South Africa and Ethiopia getting interested in the blockchain technology. In this article we will be concentrating on the potential use of Cardano in Africa.
The Revolution Will Be Decentralized. — Anthony Pompliano
Blockchain Technology And Cryptocurrencies In Africa
In recent times, cryptocurrencies have become one of the fair-haired investment options for young African entrepreneurs. Actually, for most young people in Africa, crytocurrency is their first venture into investing. The continent of Africa is very young. With 60% of the continent aged below 25, making it the youngest continent in the world- in relation to its population makeup. Africa has been dubbed as a “pool of opportunities” often because of it’s vast natural resources.
It is common knowledge that Africa has been so vastly impoverished that it’s often mistaken for a poor continent, albeit this is not the case. With this much resources, youth, talents and potential, it is ridiculous to tag Africa- POOR! It is not, Africa is a continent of abundance but enormously mismanaged due to corruption.
The effect of corruption in Africa — Higher levels of market and political monopolization. Low levels of democracy, weak civil participation and low political transparency which in turn has plagued the continent with the institutional, economic, business, political, and social challenges facing Africa today. Africa, over the years has also faced challenges such as marginalization from the global economy, scarce development finance, healthcare, poor infrastructure, and weaker governance. The list goes on although these are no longer news worthy, sadly.
The progress in this field shows that African nations are not afraid to explore the potential applications of blockchain technology. Still, if they want to make a significant impact, the countries need to invest more in the implementation of the blockchain in different sectors of the economy.
For some, mere looking at the corrupt leadership structures that is still operational even till this day, it’s hard to even imagine these authorities allowing a decentralized currency to exists. I recall speaking with a friend regarding a decentralized currency who think its preposterous to even, for one single second, think that bitcoin, and the like, are possible on a mass scale in the future in terms adoption especially in Africa .
It’s not that central financial authorities were a bad idea, but where it has failed us is where human greed has been able to manipulate the system — That’s the problem, we can see from history that centralized authorities incentivize fraudulent endeavors. We’re constantly reminded that banks can fail and has failed. But with blockchain technology there are a colossal problems across Africa which we could just leapfrog and that is the beauty of this nascent technology in the continent.
ENTER CARDANO
Cardano is home to the Ada cryptocurrency, which can be used to send and receive digital funds. This digital cash represents the future of money, making possible fast, direct transfers that are guaranteed to be secure through the use of cryptography.
Cardano is more than just a cryptocurrency, however, it is a technological platform that will be capable of running financial applications currently used every day by individuals, organisations and governments all around the world. The platform is being constructed in layers, which gives the system the flexibility to be more easily maintained and allow for upgrades by way of soft forks. After the settlement layer that will run Ada is complete, a separate computing layer will be built to handle smart contracts, the digital legal agreements that will underpin future commerce and business.
Cardano will also run decentralized applications, or dapps, services not controlled by any single party but instead operate on a blockchain — Therein lies the potential to turn the tides around for Africa, it’s easy to conclude that Cardano was built for Africa especially in times like this where the continent is in ruin due to a superfluity of lawlessness coupled with mismanagement of resources.
According to Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and CEO of IOHK , speaking in Ethiopia about their mission in Africa, he made it clear that the point of building Cardano actually transcends deployment of a solid system where one doesn’t intrinsically trust people i.e killing centralization. It’s way bigger than creating a competing currency against the best performing fiat or create a better lending systems of which there are quite a number of those which is without a doubt very innovative and has helped a lot of farmers and traders across the continent.
IOHK’s approach in providing a solution for Africa is quite simple, it’s not trying to solve the African problem by just building what it felt was the solution, but instead actually teaching the tech to students and developers in Africa; Ethiopia as the entry country. In hopes that these people (who know the problems of the country) will actually, in essence build solutions that will counter the problems plaguing their country.
Although, statistics reveals that hundreds of millions of Africans are unbanked, not enough has actually been done in banking the unbanked. The most recent World Bank Global Findex report found that roughly 62 percent of sub-Saharan Africans do not have a bank account. Though traditional banks have made efforts to improve these numbers of the unbanked in sub-Saharan Africa, a multi-generational culture of poverty, financial illiteracy and political unrest create serious challenges for achieving that goal.
Potential Use Cases Of Cardano In Africa
The way I see it, The Cardano Blockchain could be the solution for wobbly systems established in the majority of African countries. With the introduction of the decentralized functionalities, it would advantageously put an end to the inefficient methods of governance and aid business operations. Here are a couple of use cases where this could bring a lot of value to the users:
1.Cross-Border/Supply Chains
There are countless middlemen in the system, this has been effectively increasing the costs and reducing the return on investment. The implementation of blockchain in combination with smart contracts could help fix those problems. Africa’s economy is focused on the exports of goods, farm products, and oil. However, the supply chain systems in place are often inefficient.
2. Energy Supply Regulation
There is a number of companies interested in building energy infrastructure such as solar panels or windmills in Africa. The only thing holding them back are potential misuses from the moment when the grid takes over the energy. Blockchain could help tackle this problem by recording all transactions and regulate supply according to demand.
3. Property and Identity Management/Land Registry
Real estate property transfers can be registered on a Cardano blockchain, leveraging audit-ability for external stakeholders and lowering bureaucracy times and costs. Banks would not give loans without proof of land ownership, and often do not trust the documents as they are easily forged. By having the ownership confirmed by an immutable blockchain, the authorities could be sure that the land actually belongs to the owner and help them get all the benefits. This could have a significant impact on land registry management, by facilitating connection between public administrations and private stakeholders for information and data sharing.
Few other sectors that will see disruption in Africa- Education, Voting systems and Supply chain and Health care systems.
Conclusion
IOHK already has a presence in Africa in the same measure the cardano blockchain is present in the rest of the world. Every day there are more and more projects exploring the blockchain technology. The areas of particular interest are agriculture, banking, and governance, which when implemented on the Cardano blockchain will be greatly beneficial to the continent, it will help elevate Africa from it’s ruins and catapult her to the future her dreams.
As soon as the blockchain-related regulations are introduced by African governments all across the continent we will, without a doubt, see a rapid growth in the development and implementations of blockchain technology all across the African continent.
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