DevCon5 — ETHLagos
ETHLagos, to be held from February 9 to 15 at the Landmark Event Center in Victoria Island, Lagos, comprises a hackathon, a series of workshops, a conference and community gathering. Victoria Island is the business and financial hub of Lagos, Nigeria and West Africa with many government, multilateral and multinational entities residing there.
According to the World Bank and World Economic Forum, there is a direct relationship between a nation’s access to affordable and reliable energy and its economic growth. This is one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. Despite being Africa’s largest exporter of crude oil, 41% of Nigeria’s population is unable to access electricity to fulfill basic needs in cities, and up to 75% in rural areas. Those connected to the main electricity grid experience intermittent energy supply limited to 3–4 hours per day.
Hence the organizing team of ETHLagos has focused on these power issues and the hackathon is an opportunity to work alongside the developers, thought leaders, advisers, and companies who are making the infrastructure and applications that will evolve the power sector using the Ethereum Blockchain. ETHLagos will be co-organized by leaders in Blockchain, the Energy sector, and International Development Agencies to build up the local blockchain talent to generate practical solutions to the Nigerian Energy Crisis.
Part of the sponsorship received for ETHLagos will go as grant awards towards incubating and accelerating winning projects from the hackathon and mentoring them to evolve into sustainable projects. ETHLagos is supported by the founding partners Ethereum Foundation, German development organization GIZ, and Africa Blockchain Alliance (ABA).
- The Ethereum Foundation’s goal is to promote and support Ethereum platform and base layer research, development and education to bring decentralized protocols and tools to the world that empower developers to produce next generation decentralized applications (dapps), and together build a more globally accessible, more free and more trustworthy Internet.
- As a federally owned enterprise, GIZ supports the German Government in achieving its objective in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development. GIZ is supporting several solar energy farms in Nigeria that can be leveraged and connected by the participants of the hackathon.
- ABA has a vision of an interconnected Africa where there is free movement of knowledge and resources to uplift Africans. Their mission is to equip every stakeholder with the best blockchain education, acumen and tools to shape Africa’s future. They do this through technical and non-technical education programs, partnerships, policy advocacy and building a thriving community of blockchain enthusiasts with Africa and the diaspora.
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