Many have questioned Cardano’s presence on the African continent, but the IOHK team seems to have shut down many of those critics by actually taking action.
The IOHK team, headed by Charles Hoskinson, has met with African politicians and entrepreneurs to promote the cause.
For example, Hoskinson and co. met with the Ministry of Education of Ethiopia to continue their talks about the student credential system that they had talked about in August.
“Dropped by the MOE today to discuss the digital transformation of Ethiopia’s educational credentials. Five million students on schedule” confirmed Hoskinson.
The credential system is meant to change the way the academic records work for the 5 million students by putting information, like grades and attendance, on the blockchain in order to capture the data and offer a digital identity system.
According to Hoskinson, this represents just the initial phase of the program as later they want to create a national ID system in Ethiopia that could end up having 110 million users.
“It’s our intention to compete amongst others for the whole national ID system, which is about 110 million people.”
The Future is Here
The Cardano Atala Prism project in Ethiopia was placed 14th in the top 50 most influential projects of 2021 list created by Project Management Institute (PMI).
“As the largest blockchain deal ever signed by a government, the project is demonstrating how crypto assets can help drive positive socioeconomic change across Africa and beyond.”
PMI commented that this project may actually go and improve the educational outcome of students in Ethiopia.
John O’Conner, the Director of African Operations for IOHK, revealed that the government initially didn’t welcome them with open arms, but in time they realized that blockchain technology and digital identity aren’t really the disruptive figures they initially thought them to be.
A blog post touched on why IOHK has decided to direct its attention towards Africa, saying that the continent has “no allegiances to the system of the past,” which, anyway, didn’t “work[ed] out so well here.” This means that one can work better with the infrastructure: “You don’t go where the ball is right now. You go to where the ball is going to be.”
Excellent article. I will be going through a few of these issues as well..
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