# Web3 Adoption in Africa | Devcon Bogotá

- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2023-10-07
- Duration: 55:13
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-7Ozu2WQlf6E
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ozu2WQlf6E

## Description

Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on Swarm, IPFS and more.
https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/6/web3-adoption-in-africa/

Join to immerse yourself in the current realities and trajectories of Africa and Web3. Let’s talk about Africa from the perspective of Africans, the opportunities Africans see for our continent, and what the state of adoption is. Discussion themes include education and talent, DeFi, regulation landscape, culture and art, and the funding landscape for Web3 startups.

Speaker(s): Tony Olendo, Yoseph Ayele
Track: Opportunity & Global Impact
Keywords: Africa,adoption,impact

Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum
Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ 

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 6 was held in Bogotá, Colombia on Oct 11 - 14, 2022.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/

## Transcript

foreign [Music] [Music] how are you yeah we have kind of a small crowd because it's early this morning but I want to welcome you to the last day of Devcon thank you all for being here we're starting off with a panel on web3 adoption Africa and we have a great crew here today the panel is being moderated by Yosef and he is being joined by themes Tony Benson and Anda please welcome them thank you good morning everyone thanks for making it out um so welcome to this panel conversation about web free adoption on the African continent how many of you have been to anywhere in Africa here before awesome how many of you are working with anyone from the continent fantastic how many of you are just curious to know about the continent awesome so we'll try to do justice today to give you a little bit of a snippet of the exciting things the challenges the perspectives from the ground and one of the reasons why we actually wanted to do this is um many eth events that at least I've been to around the world we hear about Africa from people who are looking from the outside in as opposed to people who are actually building things on the ground so I think it'll be really amazing for us to really understand this beautiful amazing continent that has so much potential that we don't even understand what that potential is um to give you an example and I don't know how many of you might be aware but Africa right now is 1.4 billion people uh and we have the fastest growing population the youngest population the median age is 18.8 years so very very very young and and we're expected to get between 2.4 to 2.8 million billion people uh by 2050. just to give you like put that in context um we're going to have twice as many young people as all the young people in China uh in the next 18 years 50 more than all the young people in India and our young people are going to be almost three times as many young people in the US and Europe combined so if you're kind of thinking about youth age Workforce Talent base a lot is developing in the continent of Africa and the economy is growing really fast as well we talk about Finance about 500 plus million Africans have access to banking infrastructure similar number of people who have access to Internet mostly through mobile phones internet money is huge on the continent the economic growth is expected to reach you know about 6.7 trillion dollars of consumer and retails and business spending uh by 2030. so there's a lot of capital it's not just you know sometimes we look at Africa as the probably like population to help and support was actually real talent-based real economic activity real access is not enough there's a lot more to build but at least that kind of sets the the core Foundation of um how we can think about the content and the opportunities there so that's a bit of overview and afrobeatsis is actually going to take over the world yeah afrobeats is going to take over the world I'm a piano do you guys have any other genre Bongo flavor no thank you um yeah so let's just do a brief introductions of ourselves here uh maybe Tony could you kick yourself yeah hi everyone my name is Tony Orlando um been a software engineer for about 10 years I currently work at polygon as the senior education Solutions architect with responsibility for zero knowledge technology I am a early member of developer Dao I worked at coordinape and I'm really excited about education opportunities in Africa and that's why I I'm involved with web3 Africa and afrofuture which um which has like the premier nft artists across Africa and we have like fellowships and drops that we do where we work with a lot of African artists great hi everyone I'm andan Gaba I serve as chief of operations at the University of Cape Town Financial Innovation up in South Africa there we essentially translate academic research into novel blockchain applications so we'll work with Masters PhD and postdoc students to convert their thesis ideas and topics into an Azure blockchain application ranging from everything from offline payments to nfts for Content collaborations to privacy preserving tool wallets great thanks I um my name is femes I'm a dow governance engineer and researcher I'm helping Dallas and protocols build better governance I also the co-founder of the Dow governance education sessions which is basically a community of almost close to 100 people of Dow governance operators and enthusiasts so that we can learn different models and tactics to build better together good morning everyone my name is Benson joguna I come from Kenya I I work with the ethereum foundation as a fellow to promote the next billion use cases from Africa I'm also founder of safari Dao East Kenya community and contributor in Africa defy Alliance and also working with smallholder Farmers to de-risk them from effects of climate change glad to be here I'm expecting good conversations thank you awesome uh and my name is Joseph Ayala I am from Ethiopia grew up in Tanzania and Kenya and a huge part of my passion right now is increasing the level of Education around Webster across the continent seeing a lot more protocols and projects that are building the future economic infrastructures and the continent coming out and also helping develop a new narrative for the continent which is so far we've been talking about Africa needing crypto to develop and back the unbanked and all of that but actually the deeper I go the more I see that actually here the web3 community really needs Africa to fulfill its potential and reach the stage where we have mass adoption and billions of people using the technologies that we're building as their as their plan a as opposed to an option to something that's already working so and we're supposed to have actually so many more African Builders here with us to share this perspectives but because of the Visa challenges many African Builders couldn't be here which is kind of a case in point that a huge part of the world is closed off for Africans at the moment and so we need to have Defcon and many events happening on the continent so that many of you can come and experience the full potential and opportunity on the continent yeah and to actually put a number to to that we had about eight Builders these are people who are building stuff on the ground in Africa who who who couldn't get Colombian Visa so yeah yeah so Bogota Defcon in Africa sometime very soon let's make it happen yeah awesome so we have a number of themes to unpack here today and I guess the biggest one that many of us are really excited about is around the talent base and what that really looks like in the context of web3 and I love to just ask fiends just to share with us a little bit of what are the aspects of African talent that is really not understood and what are the biggest opportunities that you see when it comes to web 3 and African Talent yeah I think uh many things that are misunderstood around the talent in Africa is that we have close to one of the largest numbers of entrepreneurs in the region um you know there is this continual Narrative of you know helping the unbanked but there's an opportunity also to engage those in mid or senior level positions to transition their skill sets into the ecosystem um so I think that there's a huge potential particularly since majority of the population is under the age of 35. so we have an opportunity to grow to build together and the adoption when it comes to the internet or or TR or D or D5 will be growing rapidly but it should be led by Africans for Africans yeah maybe to contribute in what I've seen uh web 2 developers we very talented we have most high number of developers working for international organizations remotely others have moved out so we we see a lot of uh interests for web 2 developers to move to Earth three so in fact one of the barriers that we we were solving is the education bit because most of the web tool asking why should I move from web 2 to web3 then you realize it's a capacity building issue because of the benefits web 3 offers so a lot of work being done by polygon to move people from web to web 3 and yeah that has been mentioned as one of the challenges but we need to continually close that Gap I guess from my side as well we partner with polygon and impact plus to do a web 2 to web 3 bootcamp for developers about two weeks ago and we intend on doing their monthly now focusing primarily on people at the University doing computer science we're now trying to transfer over and we're seeing so much interest like our list was over subscriber people who wanted to attend and that just shows you you know how interested people are we also have the first Masters in fintech and blockchain at University of Cape Town every uh oversubscribed 55 woman this year 90 black Africans it's amazing to see and yeah thank you um yeah so for me I think um I see a lot of potential inside of the education space um specifically because I mean I was there before Google or Amazon or Facebook had presence in Africa and so a lot of my friends we were just like regular developers and um Google Google you eventually came and set up shop Microsoft came at uh and set up shop um Facebook came through Mandela and we saw like as a surge in terms of just like income and and then just impact and just quality even of like engineering and I think web2 understands the potential of Africa and I think I'm I'm not seeing protocols fully understanding the full potential of Africa inside of web 3. a lot of what I'm seeing currently are like extractive initiatives where um it's basically Shilling so I am export to call I'm actually going to come and set up and the whole goal is for me to actually get you to use my platform I don't really care about you as a as a developer and I think one of the the biggest challenges with that is that is the inside of web 2 incentives are really clear I am here to do a job you are here to pay me in real three I think it should be it should be slightly different and so how we how we motivate and how we educate existing engineering talent in Africa um really really matters um at the level of just base interest I think the the announcement of the polygon Africa boot camp um the blog post was a was was the best performing blog post in the history of the polygon blog so it like the interest is massive and then it's huge but if we don't have education initiatives that are centering around empowering the actual developers then you will actually Shield and the developers are getting smarter so they know that you that your protocol will offer swag and will offer bounties and will offer this and that fine I'll take the money and then I'll then I'll move on from this to that to that to that but so um the main thing that I would like to see really is like a the very sober consideration in terms of what is what is the level of Education impact that I want to have um and that I think anybody who thinks like that would have a massive Roi because you will be building Community you'll be building um the next wave of African developers one of the things that is a little different from many other markets that is is hardly understood is actually most devs if you just even look at developers most devs are self-taught or learning how to do development on the job so recently Google and IFC did a study and they found actually it's only a third of developers that learned the skills through formal education the rest are basically self-taught and actually when I'm on the ground and chatting with a bunch of people at you know community events and so on most people I'm coming across they taught themselves solidity on YouTube without anyone hand holding them and so when you think about education yeah you can have programs and structures and all of that but also understand that it's a very determined hungry self-driven community that you're working with and I think that really sets African Talent very different from Global Talent because it's there's less entitlement less of a position of hey I have 15 things I can work on I might show up I might not show up it's the word really means a lot to people and they're building and investing their time and energy to actually build a career and get involved in this space and actually talking about web 2 and web 3 when I talk to people who are transitioning from web 2 to web 3 this narrative and this idea that there's no one basically creating a ceiling for you you're not moving you're not moving Upward at a rate that your manager sets for you you're not being told what you can work what you cannot work on in a way that actually boxes your potential I think web3 and getting into this space means freedom means self-determination and that really speaks to that sort of individual driven self-learning mentality yeah I've also seen apart from web to or the developer Talent we have other talents like Community Builders people who are really good in mobilization really good in online social Media communication doing a good job because at the end of the day developers get to learn of things going on through such people and yeah it's still a space that we feel needs more and more people we see um change evm1 chains hiring relationship managers Community Builders ambassadors which is a really good thing since it helps push even the the benefits of web3 into the market outside of a focus of development like my background is in public policy and information Sciences so there's a lot of opportunity for people to actually participate in this ecosystem I think what also sets Africa apart is that we're solving problems for today and not 10 years from now and so I think that we have the opportunity to support this entrepreneurial spirit that already exists there to actually not only help the continent but to help help globally as well because many people don't have the luxury to like you know wait for 10 years for something to get better we have to build better systems but we also have to build Bridges so that we can actually leverage the talent that is already there to build a better ecosystem I completely agree a lot of the work we do at the University there'll be lines of people trying to get into our Hub you know like when people found out there was a blockchain based Hub at the University of Cape Town they thought it was a lie so people would always come knock on our door is this really you know for Wave 3 stuff and you're like yes it is and we've really sended ourselves around solving African problems it's Unique African problems because we see the power of web 3 and blockchain and what it can do and on your point I feel like this community needs us more than we need them you know and when you're on the ground you really get to see that you know so it's quite it's quite telling I have one hypothesis and it'd be great to hear if it's true or not and what you all think about it so one pattern that I'm observing is uh a number especially younger Talent gets into web three initially it's all about how can I increase my earning capacity how can I earn Global income and stay at home and then once people get to a certain level of comfort and say hey I'm out of survival mindset let me actually think about what I can build what sort of problems can we solve together is that is that something that you guys are are seeing from across the continent yes that's that's for sure I can give you a story of myself when I finished campus where in fact education in campus I did computer science but it was only 20 percent programming you do the rest on your own self-train all developers not one has learned everything from school you do it by self training now after I finished uh I started a startup in fact I was selected among the 20 uh budding entrepreneurs but then you have to pay bills you have to move or move from the seat and move from the village to the city you have to pay rent you have to eat so without for example funding and you're starting such a startup you your your mindset is hey let me stop trying to build this let me start surviving let me start paying for my rent let me look for food and then I'll come back later so actually I stopped building the startup and moved on to former employ moment for a while to save up but actually it's a real a real thing yes I think the other on the funding point is definitely a shortage but we're now seeing interests like CV cvvc from zuk and Switzerland just open offices in Cape Town they're raising a 20 million dollar fund trying to invest in I think over 100 startups all based on blockchain and a lot of other VCS now based on the continent are now looking to web3 so I'm hoping the funding app can be filled but I think it's not just VCS I need to come to the table it's it's also the the protocols as well that need to fund these projects at an early stage kind of like what UNICEF is also doing with the adventure fund someone has to take the risk first unfortunately unfortunately you know and I'm hoping to see more of that yeah and I think that's a really important point because um there's a lot of aversion even when I talk to protocols about doing something in Africa um one one of one of the biggest questions I have is we want to see something you've done before we want to see like something that looks basically they want to see a model a European model that applies to something that they've seen before before they want to invest in Africa and it's usually a really frustrating conversation for me because I'm like if you're looking for if you're looking for something that is European then um please go and build there you know um but specifically for me and I'm sorry I I I just won't have a filter because I'm so tired of the rule of all these conversations and people have the passionate and they see yeah and every time they say yeah we have a passion for Africa we care about diversity and inclusion but nobody wants to put their money where their mouth is um but but but specifically to your to your particular question that that is that is my own experience but also that is the experience of very many people in terms of um there's a because of the because of the social economic like status of Africa you have you most of our developers have that initial need for like a Ubi that enables them to actually think and ideate and just be at peace you know and so which is why I think um some of those Learn to Earn models would actually be really really successful um because once it is I don't have to I I don't have to think about meals and all of these things and making my rent and I could just focus on building it becomes something that is actually really really powerful I remember I was in a um I was in a boot camp and a bunch of the people I was in this was like a global boot camp and a bunch of the people I was in I was with were from different parts of the world and they said that they actually quit their jobs to be a part of the boot camp and I at the time just could not afford to actually do that um because of the socio-economic status but but over time we have to start to invest more and more and I think some of those Learn to Earn models um would be really impactful for protocols to begin to consider and just one thing I want a presence that themes touched upon is that you know at the moment we're talking a lot about devs but there's so much other type of talent that exists there and I think one of the most exciting patterns that I've also seen as an entry point is writers people coming in and doing technical writing and you know like it's it's incredible amount of talent and using that to actually help Translate what this space is about to a broader audience um which is really about is really important it's really valuable and uh there's bankless Africa also like a a growing Community that's built on top of the bankless Dao I don't know do you guys follow like the bankless dial newsletter pretty much every newsletter that I'm receiving somewhere on top is an update from bankless Africa so that's a group that's got like their stuff together yeah yeah I think the thing is is that like I don't want to like there's a continued narrative that all Africans are poor and rely on a scarcity mindset and I think that that's what it's really important to really engage those in the middle and senior level positions because although they are in a mid or senior level positions when they apply for jobs in the United States or counts in the United States they say that they don't have like American experience and so for me working in Dallas provides me an Access not only to network but opportunity to actually build things and build my credibility within it too and so I think that it's really important to make those connections so devs transitioning to web3 that's easy right and so you bring in more writers you bring in more researchers you bring in more brand strategists and there we're actually going to be providing an opportunity not only for them to to develop funding but also build reputation which is acceptable in in the globalized perspective and so I think that what we really should be focusing on is like our lowest hanging fruits and that that's really the mid to senior level because when you act on a scarcity mindset you're not going to be able or have the ability to take advantage of the networks or opportunities or take risks within those ecosystems and so for me I think like Dows are an opportunity for you to actually build products test it out and also build a network so that you can grow not only regionally but internationally as well yeah and just my own personal hypothesis is dolls are just digital tribes and so basically the Dow model inside of Africa would have particular success and different kind of like um application we just just simply because of the whole notion of community and people working together towards they are towards a common good and people having that kind of philosophy I think is something that could be explored really powerfully I know in South Africa we have the saying I am because we are and I feel like Tao's really embody that it goes beyond you as an individual and I think yeah the uptake in Dows in Africa I think will be high based on our just our culture you know and how we look at working together individuality is not really a thing there you know it's all about teams and communities and yeah and tribes one uh one really cool project that I've been building a good relationship with so far that many of us know is called Web tree Bridge it's based in Nigeria and they've been around since 2019 and I find them like to do such a cool mix between Community Building Hanson skills education as well as providing the values based foundation so that people are getting to this space really know first why does web free even matter what are the values of the centralization why does it make sense and it's one of the projects that is basically like having people stay there full-time in person being fed being housed learning Building Together doing hackathons doing challenges building the online profile getting the GitHub Pages like you know populated and the credentials online and participating in an economy where actually no one really cares what your name is where you live where you're from how old you are if you know how to execute if you know how to build you've got a track record and people will work with you and I think that's such a game changer for a huge part of the continent um where you know people try to apply for jobs and all of that and like it's hard it's hard and there's a bias against you know you're from Africa people don't know what to trust uh but if you move to a much more meritocratic environment actually like your work speaks for itself and and I think that's such a a powerful aspect of what's being built here yeah and um please don't do location based pay please because it's not fair it's not fair that um a a developer who has a similar output um a a African developer who was similar output to a 2A 2A SF developer deserves to get paid the same amount and I think we need to actually correct that it's actually it's not even just don't do it it's the other way around like people I know who are being paid a fraction of what their counterparts in other worlds are paying a fifth yeah they're basically saying yeah I'm just here to do what I need to do but as soon as I find something better I'm gonna leave so actually you're not getting someone who'll stick with you for a long time because this is an open ecosystem so you'll have more to lose in the long term if you start taking shortcuts the same way as you know layer ones and Protocols are coming during education as marketing um you're breeding mercenaries and people will leave you right away people are smart so if you're align your success with the success of people you will be the really solid infrastructure and and solid users solid team members well I think the important thing about web3 though too is that it has an opportunity for personal branding right and so independent of what location you live in if you do really good work and you promote yourself and you Pro like produce something that has a product Market fit and generates Revenue then you have that opportunity and so just to add with Dows though so Dows are not necessarily places for people to Just Vibe or develop a community it's a potential for you to develop a revenue generating model that aligns not only in value and purpose but actually output as well so for me Dows are not a place for me to necessarily build things but it's a place for me to actually Network upskill and then build things outside of it yeah I like to just shift the gear conscious of time towards financial services and access to finance because that's a huge part of this conversation and a low hanging fruit as well um maybe come to your Benson just to let us give us a little bit of a perspective from the lens you look at in terms of how web3 crypto and financial services are sort of uh um working together thank you um in terms of financial services when it comes to to peer to peer transactions Africa is leading that shows a huge need uh we we feel the the problems of outright leading in financial services is some of the countries the regulations are not outright saying we support this you're just saying use it at your own Payroll use it at your own risk others are saying we completely burn it others are quiet so but in the in the ground people actually trading peer-to-peer exchange and the statistics show Africa is leading globally now on the other end in web 2 in terms of mobile money we see also the highest number of transactions coming from from Africa uh where the penetration of mobile particularly I talk about Kenya is very high which is over 98 percent and that means people are actually using digital money it's digital because they moved to a shop give out fiat currency and receive it as a text message on their phone and able to exchange for goods and services so what this shows is the digital education people are already the curve for digital is not as high it's very easy to train anybody because of the experiences of using mobile money yeah just one example on that so every time I'm traveling in Kenya Ethiopia and Nigeria I'm not using my card I'm not using Fiat I'm only using peer-to-peer moving U.S a stable coin to local currency either through online banking or through m-pesa and basically pray for every single bill even small little shop to get a candidate to the boat right in the middle of a village or whatever using that so some of the infrastructure actually is way more sophisticated than what you have in the West in terms of payment systems and all of that yeah yeah for sure for sure yeah so the infrastructure is good the internet needs can be better but now we have challenges in still the same the transaction fees the the loan interest rates such things which we think need to be sold so what's the biggest need then if if we have some of those things what is the biggest need so the biggest need I feel is the for my in my own perspective is the credit Gap so more people need to access Credit that can help them in their Enterprises but then these people yes they're using mobile money but then there is what we call Credit scoring uh we are glad the new president of Kenya is saying we need to remove people from The Blacklist because most people who've done mobile money borrowing and they were not able to pay in some Blacklist and they cannot borrow again um so we we feel we need to to open access to credit and in a way uh build build economic identities through their transactions which now we can help them access cheaper loans here hmm well I just wanted to add in the areas of remittance as well is what the the benefits so remittance of not everybody knows is when you send money from to back to your home country and so those also have like a middle cost as well and then the like efficiency of sending cryptocurrency and the immediateness of it as well as a benefit and that's like a billion dollar industry right there so I think that we have an opportunity really because they're already using peer-to-peer to kind of merge that and also get paid in crypto so if you get paid in your stable coins or particular like it's not location based payment 88 of all crypto transactions are cross-border transactions um so the remittance part is actually really huge and and a huge part of it has been driven by shortage of foreign currency um is really really hard to access dollars and a big part of it is we're just not exporting enough as we're importing and some countries keep part of their uh foreign currency Reserve in the French treasury so just to give you some education here there's this thing called the CFA which stands for French colonies of Africa 14 countries are on a Saturday 1945. what that basically means is they have a second currency called CFA in relation to their local currency and in return they have to deposit 50 percent of their foreign currency Reserve in the French Treasury and the French government also determines sort of how much you can borrow land and all of that as a nation and basically you're earning income but half of it you don't get to bring it to your country and that basically is in some parts like it's some people say it's helping create lower inflation compared to other countries um but you don't have autonomy over your money and it creates such a huge need and so you go to Ethiopia for example there's a hundred percent premium for accessing dollars and stable coins so you basically paying twice as much for one dollar as the bank rate is you go to Nigeria last week it was 70 premium compared to the bank rate because there's such high demand for foreign currency and people are basically overriding that and using peer-to-peer stable coin to basically buy things from overseas in order to sell like how can you do any type of Commerce if our global economy is highly interconnected so the the remittance part is actually to me is like more than a trillion billion dollar industry across the continent and we still haven't fully cracked it I also think you know when we speak about banking then banked Financial Services in Africa it's not one it's not one it's not one sort of structure there's so many countries like South Africa's Financial Services System is completely different from Kenya's yeah and the solutions we might need are very different like maybe we share similarities with sort of alternative sources of credit but in terms of peer-to-peer challenges or something it's it's you know it's fundamentally different so I think when you guys and anyone speaks about it B don't speak about it as one monolith uh you know idea there's so many different countries and cultures and situations that can be built yeah yeah um so I think one of the most impactful areas I live in Trinidad and Tobago and um my mother lives in Kenya and during covet I had to send money to her um and I think the payment reels that were available at the time there's virtually no way for me to send money from my Trinidadian Bank to her Kenyan but none so I have to go through PayPal and not my PayPal but my my my close friend who lives in the U.S I kind of have to use his account and then he then settles directly to m-pesa and I think it cost me about 40 percent like in transaction fees um I got her on to crypto and life is a lot easier now um so I just want to I just want to shout out like some of those practical examples and I know this is an eth conference but bitnob um is using the Bitcoin lightning Network right now and they launched and you could actually trade and send like do 400 remittances directly to m-pesa using the Bitcoin lightning Network and those are some of the like interesting applications that we need but specifically um one of the areas that I think would be is actually severely constrained is like on-ramps and off-ramps and I don't want to preempt the next conversation which is like regulation but on-ramps and off-ramps uh uh continue to be like a bit of a constraint and so right now we have a lot of peer-to-peer mechanisms that allow people to exchange Fiat for crypto and the and there's there's need for um some some level of just base Innovation and Regulatory um support so that we could actually have sufficient well clear clear clear um specifically on wraps because Regulators realize that they could actually stop crypto on-ramps and that helps keep the foreign currency within their area but I did want to also talk about this not just in the context of foreign remittances and Africans need money and send us a dollar a day um but specific Innovation on I just hope I was hoping Ben could give us like a tldr of what he does and the specific Innovation that he's doing set at the defy space and specifically with insurance so Ben could you just give us like a overview of what you do because I think it's one of the most Innovative Concepts I've heard thank you thank you very much um so for for us we we Endeavor to solve the the insurance penetration problem so there was only two percent penetration of insurance for the Agri sector so the target was uh enterprising individuals who were able to generate some small income how can we ensure they're able to generate this consistently and it can help them grow and eventually without any help from outside they can build themselves so because we realized one event like one drought wipes out their savings wipes out their money to use for next season money to pay for school fees so we went uh so we started with the farmers and we we actually uh realized the lack of participation in insurance is the lack of trust so they they would receive Insurance somebody saw the problem traditional insurance companies came in brought in agents who sold but then they disappeared you don't see them after six months again when the next season comes when it's when they come then when it comes to payouts we don't know how much when how it's all a black box we it's very opaque so with that problem we now put this uh on blockchain where now we're able to put up the triggers so we are paying uh it's parametric insurance so if there is rainfall below a certain parameter then we trigger a payout and that list is generated and connected to mobile money uh which Now using a smart contract it's able to constantly check the existing weather conditions uh we and then after a period of time it can say now pay out this amount of money to this person the second thing using ussd that's where you dance the 800 hash Etc the farmers can now check the status of their policy by dialing they will be told okay you have triggered 25 percent so by the end of the season we foresee you will get around 400 Kenyan shillings so which is really Bridging the trust problem and helping more more people want now to adopt Insurance especially the farmers yeah yeah I really like the experimentation around the insurance space because we'll as you said we talk a lot about finance and it's all about sort of sending receiving money and also just local payment systems but if you think about all the different sophisticated economic and financial infrastructures that you need basically we're we have some things but we've got a lot to build and I think what web3 rails allow us to do is build them with the right fundamentals and in a way that actually works for the local economic and social political Dynamics and I think that's something that sometimes people from outside coming in saying hey this makes a lot of sense let's just build it for you actually it's not that simple because um you're entering uh a whole economic environment where Dynamics are very very different from what you're used to and I think what your your example really shows sort of how you can build a bottom-up space solution to addressing such a huge Market let's talk regulation and policy but before we jump into like the specifics um I guess one thing I like to mention is a lot of the conversations about crypto policy that have happened so far with policy makers is hey how can we legalize this token how can we buy this crypto how can we make it easier to sell and I think some conversations that really missing is really zooming out and helping educate African policy makers and leaders like why should we move to a digital economy let's have that broader conversation to really help understand why we're in it and then the token is really the last part of the discussion and like walk through the the whole journey of why this makes sense for you why you all have actually more sovereignty more income more stability and like make building that narrative so I just want to kind of point out that's the narrative that's really missing but I think it is important for us to also talk about the regulatory conversation specifically to access to financial services yeah so um so I hail from Kenya and we have um one of the most vocal Central Bank well one of the most vocal Governors who speaks very um negatively about crypto so he is very team ngmi and um we've seen how that has stifled stifled Innovation inside of the crypto space because we had startups that would have would have um would have been much further along this is five years ago and I won't go into the specifics of all the drama that that occurred but essentially when we the the level of the intervention that is actually required is a lot more education around um well the education director towards policy makers and regulators and specifically showing their models of how regulation could actually work inside of this particular space that makes things that that basically allows Innovation and um and um and developing to actually occur inside of the ecosystem and I think a lot of a lot of the Paradigm that they basically come from is that they see um they see crypto as being like opposed to what they are trying to do and to their existing Financial system while it is actually complementary and so um we need a lot more education in in actually showing that no there's actual there's actual economic impact and value in you creating a favorable regulatory environment for the adoption of crypto and I think Sheedy was telling us a story about how they intervened in um in Uganda and the central bank said we don't want crypto we don't want to see anybody using crypto and they went and they had conversations with the with the regulators and they were able to change and a few weeks later there was actual development we have no such luck in Kenya but those are the types of conversations that I think we need to have in terms of just exposing the complementary nature of um of crypto hell even if even if it's a cbdc I'll I will take it but yeah yeah I know what we've done uh We've working with us African Reserve Banks our Central Bank and they've funded two masters students and a PhD student to do thesis research around Financial stability and cryptocurrencies and they're now coming to the table if you've listened to the South African kavana before they were very anti-cryptocurrency but in the last two months they are now forcing all the local banks to reopen their accounts of the cryptocurrency exchanges and this is months of us is going back and forth both in speaking to them imagine getting most of the students to write a thesis topic over two years and they're starting to listen we think you know because he writed that stifle Innovation a lot and African government so I hate to to generalize they want control over everything and unfortunately in this game that's not how it works so I I hope to still hear a different yeah what actually talk to people who are working directly with central banks across African countries the sentiment that I'm hearing is actually they're not categorically opposed to this space so it's not sort of a fundamental like no no no the challenge that I don't know about Kenyans but maybe I'm talking from the Nigerian lens here now uh the the Nars that I'm hearing is actually that they are trying to get to act more financial sovereignty like themselves because there's a lot of foreign interference there's a whole lot of dependence even for printing your own currency more than 40 African countries prints their bills overseas and they pay six percent fee on all the currency that they have shipped to their country to whoever is doing the printing press work and I think they're interested in central cbdc's I think they're like what I'm hearing is they're building like an internal Network across many central banks across the whole continent to even be able to do settlement amongst one another without having to go through Swift or without having to go through these major Global players and having to use US dollars or Euro and all of that so that's those are the problems that they're trying to Grapple with and so I think working with them on a step-by-step basis I think as you talked about could potentially really yelled better results long term yeah let me load some government institutions because we have others who are really helpful in for example the capital markets where they're creating a Sandbox they say come and experiment with anything that is looks like a security which includes crypto so this is giving people opportunity to to apply then for example the regulator in Insurance also has a Sandbox come and experiment some of the solutions so such such if you see more governments going that direction to be really helpful because even m-pesa which is now really huge in the continent began with regulation issues the central bank we do not know where to place it is it under the the bank side is it under the saving side so it didn't uh yeah but because it was just an innovation they had to adopt so I feel it's the same thing with crypto as I read the commentary on line it's a host that has been let out of the race now it's already out it's running you can't block it so you yeah like you see one thing that the government's also noticing is the capital or the money coming in for example in terms of money that came in in Africa between mid 2020 and 2021 was 1.105. something billion dollars so when they see such things they say oh it can actually benefit you can actually bring in development uh in the country so I think more and more The Regulators are changing their stance we even had some comments from the governor of like the Kenyan Central weeks ago and you can hear the change of stances or because now they understand crypto and blockchain better yeah um so just to add to that politicians are motivated by their constituents right and so why I got into doubt governance because I was a political scientist as well is that our systems weren't designed for us so I think Community design is really important when you're doing these but also you can engage people through experiential learning by participating in governance so they actually show up for those meetings and say hey we want this to actually be implemented and so I think we have an opportunity really to participate and design better systems that we can then replicate into the real world I'm into that um just conscious of time here um we have we had a number of other things to cover with with you all but would be amazing just to hear questions that people have so that we engage a bit more um does anyone want to ask questions here how's it going um really enjoyed the panel I have a lot of questions but I'm just going to ask too I want to know what are the sentiments of pan-africanism in light of crypto and how it enables Nations to be a lot more collaborative especially on one network like ethereum and then second question is just are you all on Twitter social media for me I I can't I can't say I've seen crypto or cryptocurrency bringing people want to become one one Africa no still a political uh uh issue the economics of it has not really influenced the politics yet yeah gotcha and my my Twitter is Benson underscore yuguna telegram is Ben juguna okay I forgot is one thing is because we can collectively you know design these systems or talk about it in like in a more like greater light but it is it has like 52 countries it's a continent right it's very deep it has histories as well and so I think that really aligns us is that we have a huge unemployment rate you know we have entrepreneurs and we have opportunities to build the continent better but that is not devoid of our individual like countries or cultures or motivations um and I'm on Twitter I'm themes chat so f-e-e-m-s chats c-h-a-t-s I think you're on the pan-african question it's it's too early to tell as well hopefully you know this growing youth population we might see something we've tried to bring different African central banks together to discuss crypto we had a conference in Cape Town in April it wasn't that greatly attended we're trying to do them sort of year on year and we'll keep you updated there my Twitter Anda a-n-d-a NGC ABA underscore thanks I think I think um where actually just to save on time I think what my other panelists have said is actually sufficient and it gives a really good outlook of where we are and I think we'll get there eventually um I have a slightly different view like a lot of the young younger people like 20 and under that I engage with um I don't I don't sense this uh world view of hey I am this identity your that identity therefore like we're in different terms I think the the shared native that I hear is we want to thrive in this world we want a piece of this world as much as everyone else has right and the aspect of just like you know this shared experience of you know Africa in the current geopolitical and economic Paradigm kind of being positioned right at the bottom this is like that shared experience that's there so I think there's a there's a commonness of people wanting to um live a better life and have much of this world that we enjoy here in Western and in other parts of the world is is something that you know I keep noticing um and my Twitter handle is y-o-s-e-p-h-a-y-e-l-e all right um Tony Orlando t-o-n-y-o-l-e-n-d-o oh awesome well thank you I hope this is just the beginning of the conversation and I hope we gave you enough sprinkles uh talk to us come to the continent let's make Defcon Africa happened somewhere very soon and uh let's do this