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Hoskinson is on a Cardano tour in Africa. He meets ministers and entrepreneurs and continues to push the Cardano adaptation forward.

His TwitterAccount recorded the Cardano-Founder Charles Hoskinson in the past two weeks with the formation of yaks and video recordings of traditional African dances. Hoskinson posted jungle selfies with a sun hat and repeatedly pictures of himself with heads of government on long boards, with flags from various nations in the background. The IOHK Charles followers already know: The Cardano founder is on a tour of Africa. Previous stops on his journey were those Cape Innovation and Tech Initiative (CITI) in Cape Town (South Africa), visits to the government houses of President Hussein Ali Mwinyi (Zanzibar) and President Évariste Ndayishimiye (Burundi). The ADA boss also paid a visit to the Ethiopian Minister of Education, Abiy Ahmed. But what is the purpose of his journey?

“You don’t go where the ball is right now”

His first stop on the trip was the CITI in the South African city of Cape Town. In a speech he explained the motivation behind his plan to promote cooperation in Africa:

Well, Africa is a very special and interesting continent because it is going through a massive change. There is no tie to the systems of the past because those systems have not done so well here in the past. That means everything will change in the next 10, 20 years – from the way compliance works, to the way the stock markets will work, to the way they do Science will work. And as an entrepreneur and innovator, you want to be right there. You don’t go where the ball is right now. You go where the ball will be.

Charles Hoskinson, CITI, Cape Town October 15th

aside from that discussed in a panel with the successful entrepreneurs Joshin Raghubar and Simon Dingle, why it is so effective to work with future generations. One of the reasons for this is the willingness of the younger generation to get involved with new technologies. The continent of Africa has the youngest average age and at the same time the highest expected population increase – good prerequisites.

Connect the Unconnected

Then Hoskinson went to Zanzibar. there spoke he talked to President Hussein Ali Mwinyi about the country’s development towards a Blue Economy. In other words, to an economy that is designed in such a way that ecosystems are protected, but at the same time jobs are created. The men in the white robes (see the following tweet) are not government officials, but the developers and people responsible for World Mobile.

World Mobile is a project with the motto “Connect the Unconnected”. According to the company’s figures, 47 percent of the world’s population currently live without an Internet connection, 1.1 billion people in the sub-Sahara alone. The goal is therefore to equip Africans with Internet by 2030 that is powered by solar energy. It should cost “half the price” and be “twice as fast” as the offer of conventional Internet operators. Cardano holds 10 percent of the shares in World Mobile and is also a project partner, as the images above make clear. The mobile network is also built on the Cardano platform.

Digital identities on Cardano

Another stop by Hoskinson was Burundi, the world’s poorest country in terms of gross domestic product. There he spoke to President Évariste Ndayishimiye about the country’s digital transformation and signed the “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU). This is a symbolic agreement, not legally binding, between two or more parties that is set out in this formal document.

A similar approach was seen in 2018, when Hoskinson signed such a document with the Ethiopian President. The communicated goal at the time was to apply Cardano blockchain technology to the country’s agricultural technologies. At the beginning of this year, this also resulted in the widespread development of blockchain IDs for Ethiopian schoolchildren to improve the quality of education in developing countries. At the time of writing, this is the world’s largest blockchain project.

The underlying app is called AtalaPRISM and pursues the idea of developing and saving digital identity cards with entries on previous careers. These can then be presented securely and for a limited period of time, depending on the necessity in the areas of social programs, in health care, for applications, for voting and banking transactions as well as for insurance.

These blockchain IDs are meanwhile also being expanded by “Save the Children” in Rwanda. The aim is to help refugees from other countries to obtain secure proof of identity, for example. The NGO also relies on ADA to transfer donations directly and quickly. The recipients of the funds are often start-ups and entrepreneurs. The company built on Cardano supports this COTI process. According to its own statement, the company transfers ADA and Fiat currencies cheaply and transparently via the blockchain without endangering the security and integrity of the processes.