Madmen in Africa: Why Richard Branson needs a blockchain conference in Marrakech
The extravagant billionaire has transported blockchain enthusiasts from the island of Necker, which was destroyed by hurricane Irma, to Marrakech. Will this benefit the inhabitants of the African continent?
For the fourth year in a row the creme de la creme of the cryptocurrency community have been preparing spacious linen shirts, soft loafers, and ideas about the development of blockchain technologies while getting ready to pay a visit to Richard Branson (№388 on the global list of Forbes, net worth of $ 5 billion), who is conducting the Blockchain Summit. This summer they all had to fly not to the private island of Branson, but to Africa.
The reason for the transfer of the now-famous blockchain summit is simple and tragic — a devastating fifth-class hurricane with a beautiful name Irma that left no stone unturned in the Virgin Islands. A few months ago, the elements destroyed thousands of residents of the archipelago. Having waited out the hurricane in the wine cellar, Branson actively helped in rebuilding the neighboring islands and their infrastructure. However, Branson decided to transfer the next summit from his private island of Necker, where three years in a row the best blockchain minds were going, to somewhere else.
Branson’s favored his hotel Kasbah Tamadot, located near Marrakech at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, for a good reason. Instead of trying to establish a location for such an important event randomly, the billionaire decided to use the summit to draw attention to regions whose technological development lags on a global level. That is Africa and the Middle East. And also to help the local authorities solve some of the problems through the technology of blockchain.
Thought leaders
Branson is a living embodiment of the cryptocurrency motto “to the Moon”, for who, if not this eccentric billionaire, will take us all to the transcendental peaks and cosmic heights? In English there is the expression “a thought leader”, which literally means “ideological leader”, but I like to translate it as “a thinking leader”. As such, Branson genuinely believes in technology, its potential and benefits, and seeks to surround himself with the same sort of thinking people, putting thoughts and ideas into action.
Who is helping Branson in his quest to saddle the blockchain and help the developing economies of the world? Among the “thinking” this year was another billionaire, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin (№13 in the global list of Forbes, a fortune of $ 47.5 billion). Positioned against the background of the Moroccan carpet in a white djellaba, he admitted that the IT giant was behind in life in terms of using blockchain and failed to be on the bleeding edge”. Brin, along with his son “mined” Ethereum coins using a game console, after which the technology eventually became interesting and ultimately “fascinated” him. So in the near future, we can obviously count on the corporation’s appearance on the blockchain market.
The traditional organizer and inspirer of the summit, as before, was BitFury Group and its general director Valery Vavilov (earning a fortune of $ 500–700 million on crypto-business and sales of mining equipment got him a 13th place in Forbes’ rating of cryptocurrency billionaires). He was supported, as, indeed, always, by the head of the non-profit association ACTAI and venture investor Bill Tai, who is part of the BitFury board.
Thanks to the meetings already held at the island of Necker the community managed to create very important alliances and partnership agreements. The Blockchain Alliance includes 36 government organizations from around the world, and the Global Blockchain Business Council is made up of members of the business community from 35 countries. This year, the representative of the alliance is Secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers of Kenya, head of the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology, and earlier — one of the top managers of Google Joe Mucher. He is one of the leaders at the summit in Marrakech. And he is sure that blockchain innovation should be synchronized with the development of the Black Continent — and stay synchronized.
Blockchain for Africa
Bill Tai of ACTAI proposed use of blockchain technologies in the development of Africa’s economy and technological and social infrastructure. According to him, Africa is a completely undeveloped territory in that respect.
According to the World Economic Forum, 90% of the territories of the Dark Continent are not registered anywhere and are not reflected in any official documents. And this is one of the problems that Tai and Branson intend to solve with the help of the Barking Dog project. Indeed — who better protect the land of its master?
The project, which is based on the idea of the economist Hernando de Soto, will help governments of countries where land registration and registration of rights to it are still perplexing use blockchain for the records of the land cadastre.
“If you compare a number of illegal squatters and someone who has ownership of the land,” says Tai, “then the squatter just takes everything from this land and runs away as soon as the law finds him. Having the right to land fixed in a transparent system will encourage a person to want to improve his land.”
Thus, Africa will follow in the footsteps of Georgia and Ukraine, where the blockchain is already used to benefit the state in similar projects. However, in Africa, similar projects have already started: Bitland in Ghana and Land Layby in Kenya. There are examples of how blockchain projects, which were designed, it would seem, for an idle pastime, change the world around us. Take, for example, CryptoKitty, a blockchain game that allows you to breed and sell virtual pets. Especially for the Branson summit, a little animal Honu was created in the virtual enclosures of CryptoKitty. Honu is a hybrid of a turtle and a cat, which was put up for sale as part of a charity event. The collected money will be used to protect the world’s oceans and endangered species of animals in Africa.
The participants of the summit were often accused of going to Necker island only to bask in the sun for days on end. “They did not come here to do us a favor,” said Elizabeth Rosselo, co-founder of bitcoin-startup BitPesa from Nairobi. “They came because there are opportunities here. Because there is room for business growth here”.
Crazy business
Any (including technological) breakthroughs in the world and Russia happened due to slightly crazy people. They definitely have a flair, they are ready to open up to new categories of business and products. Co-owner of Red Bull Dietrich Mateschitz would not have become a billionaire if at one time he had not come up with a completely new drink: an energy drink that no one had thought of preparing and selling.
Given the success of the “crazy” entrepreneurs and the number of zeros, which is the assessment of their fortunes in the Forbes lists, it makes sense to listen to them.
Richard Branson once said that blockchain is exactly the technology that will produce an “economic revolution” in developing countries. He himself invests in blockchain and is confident in his powerful and positive influence on our lives. His blockchain summit is, of course, not like a standard conference with people in ties and suits. But it can quite help to make if not a revolution, then a powerful technological leap for Africa and the Middle East.
Who knows, maybe billionaires and technological leaders in flip-flops have discussed in Marrakech a happy, technological, convenient, simple future that will surely come.
Written by Vladimir Smerkis for Forbes.ru: http://www.forbes.ru/milliardery/364731-bezumcy-v-afrike-zachem-richardu-brensonu-konferenciya-po-blokcheynu-v-marrakeshe
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