foreign
[Music]
to close out the day we have an
interesting panel how can blockchain
help connect the next billion I'd like
to welcome our panelists Anda salima
gabin and Rajesh
along with naroa as moderator just a
couple of quick words on naroa naroa
zuratula it leads the mapping and Tech
work for Giga UNICEF prior to UNICEF
neroa lived and worked in various
company lived and worked in various
companies in Kenya from a startup that
is trying to change the world
understanding agriculture to a
non-profit empowering local
entrepreneurs through access to finance
neural holds in Masters in electrical
engineering from Stanford University and
a masters in telecommunications
engineering from ehu upv Nara is also a
proud EF fellow please join me in
welcoming our panelists and naroa hi hi
everyone can you hear me yeah perfect
thanks thanks so much for joining us
today especially I know it's the last
session of the day so we appreciate you
being here and we actually have a quiet
interesting and diverse panel here so
I'm sure that you'll enjoy the time as
as a title says we'll be talking about
Giga and about how blockchain can help
connect the next billion
but what's what's Giga it's a
partnership between genius of an itu to
connect every school to the internet and
every young person to information
opportunity and choice
by connecting schools we in one hand
equip young people with the skills they
need for the future and at the same time
we build digital economies for the
communities that are around are around
these schools
there are many connectivity initiatives
out there I always say that what's
different and unique how Giga compared
to others it's that we use data and
Technology to make the whole process
more efficient and more transparent in
particular blockchain Technologies
and that's that's why we are here today
the the panelists will have a discussion
about the blockchain applications they
are building and that they are
implementing and deploying in different
countries the applications go all the
way from staking nfts tokens smart
contracts and others and with further
Ado I'm Gonna Let each of them introduce
themselves
okay great uh hi everyone my name is
andang NABA I serve of the chief of
operations at the UCT Financial
Innovation Hub where we translate the
latest academic research into novel
blockchain applications before this I
served as an analyst at convergence
Partners a TMT focused private Equity
Firm uh focused on sub-Saharan Africa
and great to be here thanks
thanks and great to be here also thanks
for inviting me I'm Rajesh I'm one of
the founders of launch nodes and our
whole reason for being is to help people
become self-sufficient ethereum stakers
so um it's great to be here and we're
looking forward to sharing more
um hello everybody my name is Salim Abba
I'm a state Council
um from the directorate of science
technology and Innovation which sits
within the office of the presidents of
Sierra Leone I mainly well over the past
two or so years I've been leading the
project coordinator coordination as well
as some of our policy work thank you
and my name is harvankana I work as the
blockchain lead for Giga at UNICEF uh
thank you so much nice to be here
um so Herman let's start with you you
work at UNICEF and UNICEF is not the
type of organization that people would
think of that's working on blockchain
that's building Tech products and can
you tell us a little bit about gigas the
team uh how it works what type of work
you do
sure so
um Giga sets uh inside the office of
innovation at uh at UNICEF and we're a
kind of small team of like 40 people
approximately and we operate kind of
like a startup within a UNICEF itself
um
are there any like blockchain developers
in the room maybe could you guys stick
your hands up yeah so uh we're we're
growing our Tech Team uh we actually
have a position open right now uh if you
wanna come talk to me afterwards
um but uh basically so far we have uh
connected approximately a million
students to the internet uh and the
challenge that we really face is how to
connect the next the next billion
so to do that we see uh blockchain sort
of adding value in a couple of different
ways uh the first one is uh we estimate
uh needing approximately 428 billion
dollars to connect the world schools so
our biggest sort of uh well our first
sort of use case is moving all this
money around and getting it to the right
places in a way that's transparent and
efficient and uh and affordable
um the second option that we see uh
value in is uh automating payments for
connectivity so using smart contracts
and monitoring connectivity in schools
to automate payments to internet service
providers
um then we also focus on nfts so at the
beginning of this year we launched uh
the un's largest nft collection called
Petra kingdoms
um where all of the royalty uh goes to
uh fund Giga goes to help support Giga
uh so that's that's that's kind of a
neat thing uh and we're also working on
follow-up projects uh for that uh that
particular project
um and we're also investigating um if
like Innovative financing uh solutions
to pay for the operational expenses of
connectivity so uh one of them is
connectivity credits uh another one is
where we're looking at uh using staking
to allow people to uh to stake their
their eth and generate uh returns for uh
for paying for connectivity
um but basically we work with
governments
um
to try to convince them to give us like
a regulatory sandbox to try these things
out try them for the first time so that
we can scale them up later and deliver
some impact
um so far the most of the projects I
mentioned are sort of in the MVP stage
um and we're seeing some promising
results so we're looking really forward
to uh to making an impact in the coming
years
good perfect as you said I think for the
ones that for people that are not
familiar with UNICEF we operate in one
90 countries around 190 countries and
something special or different about
assets that we work very closely with
governments that all the product
solutions that Herman was describing we
work closely with governments to
implement them in country and that's
where salima you come from the other
side of the person where you see within
the government of Sierra Leone and so I
like to tell us a bit about this unique
or different uh directorate of Science
and Innovation that you have in your
country
our setup how it impacted the Innovation
ecosystem in the country and the work
you do sure so the directorates of
science technology and Innovation was
established by the current government in
2018 and the main mandate is really to
leverage the use of science technology
and Innovation to support the government
deliver on its National development plan
so by that we work across various
sectors and we've all also developed a
10-year National Innovation and digital
strategy which is our 10-year plan to
digitally transform Sierra Leone and we
focus on three key areas which is
digital economy digital identity and
digital governance and as I said because
of where we sit we really in a space
where we're in a position to work across
various sectors that includes the
private sector we work with various
private sector Partners in Sierra Leone
out of Sierra Leone to really support
the development of our local ecosystem
because one of our aims is to really
establish civilian as an Innovation Hub
one of the works that we've done is to
kind of work with the private sector to
develop an ecosystem mapping of the
Innovation sector in Sierra Leone so
being able to know what the different
services and players are within the
field or the place where we work is we
work with our public sector partners
that is all the different government
Ministries departments and agencies
basically supporting them in the
different work that they're doing seeing
how they can use Science Tech and
Innovation to really achieve the
government's agenda and also finally one
of the key areas where we work is our
International Development Partners we
work with various International
Development partners and one of our main
Partnerships has been with UNICEF from
the start the UNICEF Innovation office
in Sierra Leone has been really key to
the work that we've been trying to do in
one area where we've really worked
closely is to support the government in
its educational agenda which the
flagship of the government's human
capital development agenda with
um we so with that we've really worked
on various projects um such as Giga
which we're talking about today we've
also worked on other
um actually even before officially
Giggle was announced we worked with
UNICEF to map the geolocations of all
the schools in Sierra Leone so that was
really key to us in Lane that found the
groundwork for the work that we're doing
now with um Giga but then one of the
other projects that we're really also
proud of that we've worked with UNICEF
Sierra Leone is on learning passports
which is really a partnership with Giga
they kind of go hand in hand so
um that's kind of sort of the work that
we do within the space in Sierra Leone
and so we're really
um happy and excited to be here and
we'll be talking about some of this work
in a little bit before that now we want
to uh
can you still hear me yeah and we want
to announce an exciting project that
we've been working on for the last year
in partnership with the ethereum
foundation under Rwandan government
uh it's the first time that we are
publicly speaking about this so we are
quite excited about it and yeah they
make it it's just fantastic thank you
for that
um so yes um we have a video coming up
very shortly which kind of explains more
about this project
um so rather than kind of spoil that let
me just give you the outcome and the
outcome is that Rwanda now has a solo
staking infrastructure which means that
it can use staking rewards from staking
ethereum to fund internet connectivity
in schools and that's a world first and
pretty exciting
um so yeah that's that's been great
um the other thing I'd like to say is
we're really narrow at a stage where the
proof of concept's been running for a
year it's been successful we've seen the
outcomes from that and we're inviting
the broader ecosystem to get involved so
we want our competitors to get involved
we want
um you know developers we want other
people involved in the ethereum EK
system to take up the Baton now and to
move this forward
um you know no one entity can do this
gig has been fantastic in kind of
capitalizing the whole program we've had
support from the ethereum foundation and
elsewhere but um you know 50 of schools
in the developing world don't have
internet connectivity right now there's
thousands of there's billions of dollars
staked on the ethereum network at the
moment
some small fraction of that could
certainly help change change lives so
that's really what we're what we're
saying here
um and I think the final piece really is
to say the technological aspects of this
were one part of the project but really
the other challenge was
um you know bringing people together
bringing people along this journey two
years ago there was no such concept as
ethereum staking it hadn't been launched
um and yet here we are
um effectively two years on and the
random government has done something
which no other country has done so far
and that didn't happen by accident you
know it there's been a lot of kind of
negotiation workshops working groups
education sessions briefings
um to bring us to this point and in
particular
um leadership on the ground from the
leader of of Unicef in country and
Rwanda Juliana has been amazing
um Minister ingebora has also driven
this project forward we've had support
from the Ministry of Education Finance
um a Central Bank of of Rwanda
um and ICT and really everyone coming
together and working collaboratively has
made this happen and it's a model now
that we hope we can
um scale across the world
can I ask a quick sort of follow-up
question about that bcid so I'm I'm sure
all of you guys are wondering like why
is this so complicated like staking just
makes sense right like why why aren't we
doing this so maybe can we talk a little
bit about like why why is it so
complicated to do this in in a country
like Rwanda
yeah so so again two years ago staking
wasn't even a thing and if you imagine
the complexity of getting anything
changed in a country it's it's pretty
difficult I think salima's probably got
more insight into you know how to make
that happen than anyone else here but
um you know it does take regulation and
to change it does take people to really
grasp the concept and you know you know
we've been immersed in this for years no
doubt a lot of people here will have
been involved in ethereum and other
blockchains
I'm explaining that to people and taking
them on this journey isn't a
straightforward thing it takes a lot of
Courage a lot of
um you know
bravery really to to kind of adopt this
as a concept and to take it to
government departments and say this is
something we want to do so a lot of that
time hasn't been
um installing servers and putting
software on on devices it's been
around the table and and with your
support and narrowers and others so
that's that's really why it's been
complicated and I'd say that it's also
linked to the regulation around crypto
whether a given country it's a lot to
hold crypto or not
um so link to that for this first
payload and after many back and forth we
decided that we're gonna have the node
hosted on the cloud instead of locally
the way of this decision and maybe
elaborate also on the pros and cons of
each of them like a locally hosted
versus cloud
yeah so that's a that's a great Point
um along this journey there have been a
range of kind of key decision points
what um ethereum client that we use
where do we want the infrastructure to
be hosted should it be Cloud should it
be
um you know on-premise somewhere
um and I'll start by saying our whole
philosophy kind of aligns very closely
with the ethereum foundations which is
geographic diversity is key and having
diversity of a kind of software client
is is really important as well we don't
want any like we don't want there to be
too many people hosting in one
particular place that's that's our
strategy
um and the reason I stress solo staking
is so important is because it makes
people self-sufficient which again is
part of our our approach
um so for practical reasons for Speed
reasons
um for resiliency reasons it made sense
to use the cloud for the proof of
concept effectively longer term we want
every school to have a node we want
everyone to be
um you know communities being able to
stake and and run their own
infrastructure
um and that would be a fantastic
achievement when that happens
long wait there but I agree with that
and salima she's one of the first ones
starting the journey towards that that
goal where is Sierra Leone you are
actually setting up or in the process of
setting up a lot I know that's locally
hosted
um yeah so I think um we've gone um in
terms of the proof of concept but I
think we've started with looking at um a
physical
um hosting instead of cloud but I think
um this is where collaboration and one
of the things actually we've also tried
to do is an engagement with some of our
other government
around who are also doing the same thing
we've had a couple of engagements with
the Rwanda government and the point is
to really learn um learn and together
learn lessons and making sure that you
know we're all working towards the same
goal
um so for us as I said we've really
looked at how we could
um lay the initial groundwork for
hosting a physical node as you she said
obviously we will also want to be in the
position where every school does have
like a physical notebook also but we're
not at that place yet um looking at um
the different challenges that we face so
one of the things which we wanted to do
was looking at the possibility of
Hosting notes with
um specific
um internet service providers so for the
initial preparation for that we've kind
of sourced um the hardware that will be
required we have an agreement in place
with one of our internet service
providers who would also be one of the
service providers actually providing
connectivity
um to the school
um I think we're in the last stage of
preparation and we're hoping I think
would have been the very near future to
officially launch uh
um physical
um node and yeah fantastic no that's
great and another thing that we're
hoping is going to be the norm moving
forward is our internet service
providers taking crypto as well as
payment but because you know that what
part of the hurdle right now is you'll
have to convert from ethereum to fiat
currency to pay for a service
you know we've we've had conversations
with isps where they've said no we'll
happily take payment in ethereum and
that I think will be the future as well
yeah not um I think same as sincerely
under conversations we've had with our
isps has been very um encouraging I
think um where the conversations now is
at is with our other government Partners
public sector Partners looking at the
national the bank of Sierra Leone who
regulates that space and the ministries
of finance and that kind of sort of
thing just making sure I think
um I think the initial conversations
around
the legislative framework to do this
kind of sort of thing I think that's
been the areas where we've been having
the more conversations around but then
also look making sure we have the
infrastructure as well um ready for that
yeah and another thing to mention I
think is the road map for ethereum
clients means that it will be a lot
easier to host nodes you won't need you
know the resiliency and and the you know
to store full versions of the blockchain
in the future so again it's going to get
easier and easier for people to host
their own notes which is fantastic
what I find really interesting to to
sort of hear is uh it seems like
everybody's kind of on board with this
uh everybody like thinks it's a good
idea but still it's like so difficult so
how do we how do we talk to governments
and help them understand and help them
shape their policy
I don't know salima do you have any
insights in in into that yeah as the
government representative
um I think it's it's a combination of
several factors in terms of
um why we currently don't have it and
what can be done I think
um for me where I see I think that it's
about highlighting where the
opportunities are um with this I think
first of all the opportunities with
regards to blockchain especially when we
talk about
um Giga and how that could be utilized
for smart contracts and used to
um improve the relationship with
internet service providers provide
better accountability and monitoring and
transparency I think um highlighting
those opportunities are great in terms
of getting everybody on board but then I
think also beyond that there's a bigger
opportunity with regards to most of
these emerging Technologies when you
deal with um the government or
traditional governments such as hours my
thinking it's about
opening up the space for learning I
think it's about improving the local
expertise within uh different nations
and it's about improving awareness so
one of the things we're excited at the
SDI about
Giga specifically is looking at because
we we believe in leveraging the use of
the most high-tech technology you can
find as well as the most not low-tech
but the most useful for our current
situations looking at we also utilize
things such as ussd and those kind of
platforms because we consider our local
context issues such as electricity and
internet penetration rates so all those
are important but with Giga and
blockchain and possibly even looking at
cryptocurrency to as payments the
opportunity for this our government is
to Pilot these Technologies within a
very small space which will hope then
raise awareness allow us to learn about
the these emerging Technologies then use
the data and evidence to really develop
really effective legislative and
Regulatory Frameworks that would better
support and enhance this so we want to
get ahead of the pace we know
um these Technologies are coming whether
we like it or not so the opportunity
with this is really to provide a pilot
where we can really use this as an
opportunity to learn much more about it
which would then enable us to better
regulate regulate it so I think that's
where the opportunities and the
learnings and it's about really
showcasing that to get everybody on
board exactly and showing its value
right and one of them
telling to say I don't know if it's a
challenge but usually face it that we
have to communicate super technical and
complex work to to people that are not
technical or don't necessarily
understand the technology and what
happens sometimes it's that if you
mention the word crypto smart contract
to someone that doesn't understand it
then they get scared and they just say
no we are not on board so the moment you
start proving it starting small and
making small things and small steps then
I think they understand the value and
they start becoming more comfortable
uh I guess from outside as well on your
point coming from an emerging market
like South Africa
to drive cryptocurrency adoption you
need to meet them halfway so one of our
PhD candidates has actually developed a
solution where you can send
cryptocurrency via ussdn SMS we'll start
looking for use cases we've spoken to
one ISP who actually approached us
saying oh this could actually work
dating people and communities pay for
for internet connectivity so those
conversations are still ongoing but that
whole project made us realize that we
can't just ideate in silos and think you
know people from South Africa from
Sierra Leone whatever who made their
software we need to go to them and bring
the solutions to them you know be even
with speaking about blockchain and
everything they don't even have to
necessarily know that it's a blockchain
in the background I always have this
argument with people
they'll be like you have to educate
everyone about blockchain and this and
that but how many of us know how a light
bulb works you know you just when you
turn it on how many of us know how our
Acorn works you just turn it on so I
think this this uh you know this view
that you have to educate people about
everything you want to blockchain and
this and that for them to be on board it
is incorrect and we should rethink that
we've been
around we need them to be on board to to
make everything work and we all know
that ISP is usually for the mitc to go
to cities to to run areas and it's
harder harder to convince them to go to
more remote Community Schools from your
experience working with the private
sector what type of incentives business
models would need to to make them also
go to places that maybe are not as easy
to connect yeah I think you know there's
obviously tax incentives that South
Africa is now put into place but one
thing we looked at is the tokenization
of the Lost mile infrastructure so maybe
you could have a big private sector
player private Equity Firm put the
capital expenditure at the beginning and
then resell that after three or four
years when they find life cycles now
coming to an end to local communities
you know and then the uh
Raven was able to get in the interim can
then sort of subsidize the resale price
so they may not need the large multiples
that you need in terms of a general sale
and why something like that would also
work very well I know we once invested
in a fiber asset in Ghana and a few
other countries and we're struggling to
know but we were struggling to sell it
now to a third party because we could
only set it in the sort of the 25 we
owned it but if we could tokenize that
25 we decided to local isps we could
sell it to people you know with who have
extra money we're not just want to help
other people but because the I guess the
framework wasn't there yet we weren't
able to do that so you know on your
point as well how much was it 428
billion and I know in Africa alone it's
100 billion dollars we can't look to the
financing mechanisms that we've done in
the past to sort of solve future issues
we have to completely rethink how we do
it and things like blockchain and
tokenization I think will be you know
the the key to doing that I mean
absolutely like nobody likes making
Banks even richer right so nope
not me no no definitely not anyone at
this conference either
and that's something that egg itself is
experience as well this organization and
be Lina token system that aware schools
are granted a certain amount of tokens
based on how difficult it is to connect
them and then providers if they decide
to go to schools that are harder to
connect a daily get these tokens and
they'll be able to exchange these tokens
for a set of incentives
um maybe one thing there is that again
for these incentives we have to work
with the public sector so I guess
highlighting the
necessity to work with all the players
in in the in the market all the way from
the private sector to the public and
have them have conversations together
good yeah I think as well Academia so
from I now work at the University of
Cape Town and it's uh often there's a
place that we don't consider so we
really now translate this sort of
academic research on my PhD Masters
level to blockchain applications and I
think we also need to come to the table
now because you need a new way of
thinking like I was saying a private
sector company that's been making huge
margins from selling connectivity for 10
to 20 years they're not going to change
how they do it you know you need new
people now to come to the table and
challenge the status quo which is what
we're trying to do at the Hub
yeah I think I think that but I think
that's a really interesting
um sort of contradiction because on one
hand we have to like rethink all these
things and on the other hand if you want
people to sort of join you on that
Journey you have to work with their
systems and you have to
you know
make them understand that way and I
don't say it as um Old World versus New
World in a second wait it sounds like
you do I think you know big corporates
are coming along for the journey now
increasingly they're understanding what
blockchain's about they're looking at
their own proof of Concepts and Pilots
um and and yes you know they've got
other motivations potentially but um you
know this is this is an opportunity for
everyone the way we see it
and and that you you work again closely
with startups in the region more in
general what are some of the trends
around blockchain and around startups
that you see in the African region uh so
around blockchain we're now seeing less
uh Financial sort of use cases so we're
now looking at a decentralized data
marketplace where data creators can
actually sell their daughter to other
people that could now be used maybe
final connectivity for example we also
have an nft startup that is working with
content creators to let them share
Revenue based on their contribution to a
work so he's particularly working with
uh authors and wants to work with
illustrators now so I write a chapter
for a book you write a chapter four book
and my tree gets more views will get
remunerated more so those are some of
the interesting use cases we're seeing
the Manda money one I explained earlier
about the ussd cryptocurrency payments
as well it's on the financial side so
it's quite an exciting space and I mean
our hubs only been operational for about
18 months and we have six spindle
startups now let's just come from
academic research which has been really
beautiful to see
maybe some people
that are in the universe
some of these startups none you could
share
we I'll connect you guys yeah
her when following Trends before you
spoke about some of the past work or
work that Giga has been doing could you
give us a sneak peek of what's coming
next or what's next and some of the
things that we are excited about for the
next year yeah for sure so
um the last year has really been about
like building MVPs and talking with
governments and getting them to allow us
to do things
um and I think we've made like a lot of
Headway with that so uh for example
uh we're now starting to roll out uh a
product called gig accounts which will
allow
um payers for internet connectivity to
monitor contracts get sort of real-time
data about the performance of the
connectivity at schools and then uh
register payments for that so we're
quite Keen to roll that out and what
we're hoping to achieve over the next
year for that is to start issuing our
first sort of smart contract contracts I
suppose so the the idea will be that an
internet service provider would connect
to school and then automatically receive
payments if on internet connectivity is
detected so that way we can make it way
easier for internet service providers to
to receive payments and reduce a lot of
a lot of overheads so that's one of the
projects that were we're quite excited
about about progressing
another one is we're building a sort of
collection on top of our uh existing nft
collection the the original nft
collection Petra kingdoms that we that
we launched was all about fundraising so
you know you you purchase these these
tokens you get a really cool sort of
data-driven uh art piece uh and the and
the funds go to Giga to uh to to help
Giga connect schools what we're building
next is
um a collection where we will create an
nft for every single uh School in the
world
um and really not put the focus on uh
fundraising or raising as much money as
possible but instead sell these to
people who care about the school
communities get them in the hands of the
people who actually support these
schools and create a sort of gamified
platform where we will reward uh rewards
people for contributing data about these
schools so we'll create a crowdsourced
data system for collecting School data
and the idea is to make the the largest
sort of decentralized School database in
the world
yeah and that raises many interesting
questions such as if your crowdsourcing
this data what's the consensus mechanism
that you'll be using to approve or to
ensure quality of the data that you are
gathering and this type of like
interesting new questions that we even
have before yeah absolutely and I've
I've learned a lot at this conference
about uh about ideas like that so it's
been super useful uh to uh to to join
this conference and and learn more about
that uh yeah and there have been a
follow-up
we we've been saying that sometimes it's
like it takes a lot of work to to make
changes within the government or make a
government bodies to to innovate UNICEF
it's not a government but it's also a
huge organization that has many many
processes in place how is it to work in
this type of things within UNICEF
um yeah you're you're right uh it's it's
a very big organization I think
um I come from sort of the world of
startups where things go super fast and
You Break Stuff uh and you try again so
that's certainly that's certainly big
difference but I I always like to sort
of compare the the progress UNICEF makes
as like glacial so it's like super slow
but it's Unstoppable so I think UNICEF
uh opens a lot of doors
um yeah we're we're talking with central
banks and Ministries about implementing
some some real change in the in
countries and we're finding it really
difficult to do that so imagine being uh
being a startup and trying to get a get
a meeting with a central bank uh
Governor to to approve your
well-intended sort of crypto project so
um yeah so I think UNICEF has an
important role to play there in sort of
opening the doors for these kinds of
things opening the minds of uh of
governments and um yeah and allowing a
lot of other startups to to then make
some real progress
and selling any advice on how to yeah
maybe interact or get that difficult
meeting that everyone was talking about
and yeah
um yeah sure and I think
um
one of the things I'll say looking at
the model that we have in Sierra Leone
is I think uh not it's not just because
I work there but I think having uh
institutions such as like the
directorates of science second
innovation in Syrian has been really key
um I think especially when you work
within uh developing countries such as
Sierra Leone where science second
innovation has not been a big player and
the local expertise is not there I think
one of the if I would advise I think one
of the key things would be for each
government to have
um its version of a dsdi as we call it
because I think it really um cuts across
and really enables that partnership
um to develop
um I think we're lucky within the SDI to
sit to us we call play with various
different individuals we have lawyers we
have our developers we have our data
scientists who have our policy advisors
and all of these individuals that and
enable us to do what we do and I think
that's why we were able to really form
an effective partnership with UNICEF
Sierra Leone and The Innovation office I
think in terms of having one of the few
like Innovation work plans and work
plans out there with UNICEF I think
that's been really key and I think we
kind of
play the role with UNICEF off we develop
our projects together we establish our
goals and then our dsdi plays the role
of fronting with the government on
behalf of USF so we would go to our
government partners and I think also the
fact that we sit within the Office of
the President of Sierra Leone gives us a
lot of Leverage in terms of when we go
and knock on those doors like the
National Bank of Sierra Leone to say
together with UNICEF there's this great
projects which we want to try out deals
with blockchain and crypto could you
please
um you know engage with us with us on
this and they're willing to do that so I
think for me what's really important is
having that very high
government and political buy-in into
these kind of things and then and even
with us even though we do we have our
challenges but I could just imagine
having to do this or trying to do this
in countries that don't have that high
level government buy-in that could um
potentially be very difficult so I think
um one of the key things that have been
useful to us or have enabled us have a
lot of the progress that we have is
having that um seat and being able to
interface with UNICEF with our
government development partners with the
private sector with other International
Development Partners so being like in
the middle of all of that and being able
to coordinate it I think that's been one
of the key things so more than maybe to
learn from and replicate in other places
yeah it's interesting we met with the
Colombia team earlier this week and we
were talking about the types of things
that we could do together how to start
working in different aspects that we're
discussing and what we're told is that
here it's actually quite people because
they don't have this type of
coordinating body that you have in
Sierra Leone what they were telling us
is that there are Ministry of Education
Bank Ministry of ICT that each of them
work on their own and that it's
difficult to coordinate the work across
all of them and I think maybe just a
quick nugget I think which would be
interesting actually so the chief
Innovation officer of Sierra Leone who
effectively leads a dsdi is also the
current minister of basic and Senior
secondary education and a lot of our
projects as I mentioned do deal with
education so I think that gives us an
added leverage in terms of really being
in the critical space to be able to
coordinate all of these activities so
yeah
yeah so I love to learn definitely and
it's been we've been working with you
for many years now and I think that the
things that we've achieved it wouldn't
have been possible otherwise
um
maybe as follow-up questions to both of
you what would be the
main opportunities that you see with
blockchain in your context
yeah from tokenization like I spoke
about earlier we're also looking at
blockchain actually for dynamic Spectrum
sharing because in South Africa a lot of
the spectrum it's owned by the large
mnos but and the small players don't
have enough Capital to obviously partake
at the auction but there is sort of time
during the the day where Spectrum isn't
that used by the big mnos so we're
looking at now using blockchain for
dynamic Spectrum sharing with an ISP in
a small town like grahamstown where I
went to high school can now use Spectrum
from 10 pm to 5 a.m you know at a lower
cost than what the sort of use it during
the day so that's one interesting use
case we're looking at it I guess in this
context yeah
Thinking Out Loud everything be possible
made to do something similar also with
pricing for connectivity depending on
apply something similar to that yes so
the pricing now would uh be dependent on
how much the ISP would get the Spectrum
for and obviously when it's
underutilized this pricing would be less
so I guess that's the keyboard inside
it's still very early stages the
government announced it a few months
back and we just now started writing a
few concept papers to see what we could
do but that would be the model but we're
hoping we can move forward with it
and yeah let's say from my side I'm very
much kind of immersed in the world of
staking and just the possibilities that
every individual can be supporting this
network and can gain rewards from doing
that so whether it's a small community
or a school or
a project for climate change we just see
the march of Technology enabling that
more and more so we're working with a
range of entities who want to use
staking returns for different things the
beauty of this model as opposed to
traditional kind of philanthropy is that
you can put your money on a node use
that node for good and then take your
money away later and put it
do other things with it so it's not a
case that you have to donate and your
money's gone forever and I think that's
quite appealing when the you know the
need for capital for some of these
projects is so vast so yeah there's lots
of exciting uh kind of technological
developments we're just excited to be
part of it and then as you said maybe
it's not huge values but you can start
Distributing and decentralizing this
hosting and each school could have one
node where the the revenue maybe it's
not huge but enough maybe to pay for
internet in the room School absolutely
and and like different models as well so
we touched on liquid staking for example
right now it doesn't have to be the case
that every school needs 32 ethereum
um for its own school or multiples
thereof there could be liquid staking
across Rwanda or
um South Africa or Sierra Leone and
different entities have different
amounts but they all gain staking
rewards so there's a lot of different
avenues that this could progress through
anything you'd like to add any of
um yeah so I think the the biggest
opportunity I see is in
um
moving all this money around uh so
um
paying for internet connectivity in
countries that may uh have like a lot of
corruption or something like that I
think blockchain can really provide a
little transparency in that and a lot of
fairness in that uh so I think I think
that's a that's a huge opportunity
um yeah I think um going off especially
with the smart contracts and the
real-time connectivity monitoring I
think for us those have been really
exciting on both ends I am the private
sector specifically also excited about
the fact of having a smart contracts and
there's no discrepancy of whether how
much connectivity did I actually provide
and that back and forth exchange so
that's been exciting on the private
sector space because actually so we have
been in the process of connecting some
of the schools which currently have
connectivity to that platform to be able
to monitor
um in real time but then from a
government perspective it's also very
important for us being able to really
hold isps accountable to their service
contracts that they signed because
before if you have no way of really
monitoring the connectivity that they
provided you're just really paying out
without being absolutely sure that what
you're paying for was um delivered so
for government perspective that's been
really important to one of the the areas
which we're really looking forward to
exploring a bit more yeah yeah
absolutely because you usually what's
the case is that for a lot of these
schools the connectivity is paid for by
a government or
you know units of country offers or
something like that and then one person
is responsible for monitoring 150
schools or a thousand schools and it
just becomes impossible to sort of check
whether the connectivity is actually
delivered and the schools themselves
have no negotiation no negotiating power
with their intern service providers so
um yeah one of the products that we're
offering to schools is this sort of
application that they can install
themselves on their Network that will
provide us with real-time internet
connectivity data so it's really a tool
for them to sort of take control over
that and allow a huge body like UNICEF
to put their weight around
making sure that internet service
providers are providing the connectivity
that schools deserve
I hope that you learned as much as I did
maybe if you can go to the yeah to the
next slide
too many times open
yeah let's try the video now
um yeah yes you say that if any of the
things that we spoke about seemed
interesting to you whether you are
interested in joining our team working
with us scan that QR code and sign up so
that we keep you in our Network and we
can count on you in case you need your
help
and yeah the last thing is that we have
a video that we wanted to show it's not
appearing here though so I don't know if
someone would
slivering sewer connectivity
is a global initiative to connect every
school to the internet and every young
person to information opportunity and
choice Giga is leading Innovative models
and mechanisms to finance School
internet connectivity over long periods
of time
working in partnership with governments
to build the right capabilities for the
future
Giga and the ethereum foundation are
collaborating on an exciting and
Innovative approach to fund School
connectivity
Giga wants to use ethereum stating as a
new sustainable model to generate income
to fight the long-term social effect
blockchains like ethereum allow
individuals and organizations to
contribute to network security
availability and processing power by
staking funds while running their own
loads within the network in return for
providing this service participants and
staking Rewards
ethereum is the most widely used smart
contract capable blockchain and is now a
proof of stake blockchain which
effectively eliminated that energy usage
that was associated with its former
proof of work model
anyone who commits 32 ether can benefit
from staking new words
this model of staking provides irregular
rewards over many months and years
enabling a wide range of different use
cases that can deliver societal benefits
and social impact from the money that is
earned leader is working with the
Ethereal foundation and the government
of Rwanda to provide that fast example
providing funding for school
connectivity in Rwanda launch Notes is
an Institutional provider of investment
grade ethereum solo stating products and
services and was the implementation
partner for this pilot project in Rwanda
how does it work number one people and
organizations that are interested in
supporting screen connectivity we call
social stickers commit either number two
Giga steak by running valid data nodes
number three the rewards generated from
the nodes are used to pay isps on an
ongoing basis to enable School
connectivity over the long term number
four after the agreed taking period the
original eater can be returned to your
social sticker or continue to be staked
for ongoing schools connectivity
number five the value of a eater may
rise or fall over the staking period
Giga has donated the first 32 effect was
taken enabling the rewards to pay for
connectivity at Pilot schools in Rwanda
in the future Gita plans to allow people
to pledge less than 32 either which can
be pulled and staked to support Giga
this is a future functionality that is
not live today data is setting up
ethereum validator notes for schools in
Rwanda in partnership with the Rwandan
government
thanks honey yeah with Pizza Plus we can
wrap up the panel thanks thanks everyone
thank you all thank you