NEAR and its social good in Africa
With Africa booming as one of the fastest growing blockchain economies, many Web 3 and blockchain projects have tried to identify with Africans.
Africa is the third fastest-growing cryptocurrency market, with a surging growth of 1200% between July 2020 and June 2021. These are figures that can’t be easily overlooked. From the integrations of blockchain in the financial system NFTs for the African art community, blockchain has spearheaded decentralization, increased financial control, and offered a bypass to censorship.
We’ve seen the rise of many blockchain startups in Africa, but taking close consideration, NEAR isn’t just providing a building ground for African Blockchain startups but empowering the continent with a lot of social good.
NEAR for Africans
We’ve noticed that NEAR has taken a special interest in Africa, and this is not a surprising feat. NEAR took this movement by launching a regional hub in Kenya for Africans. The NEAR Kenyan hub is believed to act as an incubation center for African blockchain projects.
Far from that, we’ve seen a lot of NEAR grassroots integrations for Africans. From telegram and Twitter Social Meets to classroom gatherings, the NEAR community has worked hard to bring the blockchain and Web 3 gospel to rural African communities. We’ve had a lot of hackathons and guilds hosted in different regions of Africa to drive adoption and sensitization.
There are launches of NGOs in Africa, built on NEAR, targeted at driving home the importance of blockchain and Web 3 systems. Chapter One Foundation (C1) an NGO built on NEAR to present opportunities to Africans in NFTs. Launched by artists from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Canada, the project has driven the adoption of blockchain in the African art community.
We cannot overlook the reforestation projects embarked on by NEAR to sustain a “green economy” in Africa. This includes the planting of trees in Zimbabwe to offset carbon. This positioned NEAR as one of the environmentally friendly blockchain ecosystems for Africans.
There are also a lot of projects built on NEAR that promote the well-being of Africans. For instance, the 5 billion steps project carried out by Sweatcoin to restore 250 water wells in Africa. The numerous projects by NEAR prove beyond reasonable doubt that NEAR is concerned and has made positive steps to promote social good in Africa.
Blockchain and the future of Africa
There has been a rapid increase in the African blockchain economy, and this has impacted the course of Africa’s future. We wouldn’t limit this discussion to cryptocurrencies but to the entirety of blockchain technologies; DAOs, Web 3, and NFTs. Blockchain introduced a lot of benefits like decentralization, transparency, improved security, and privacy, and this has offered solutions to some of Africa’s problems.
From finance, health, education, law, and politics to real estate and many industries, we cannot turn a blind eye to the loud impact of blockchain in African society. We have lots of African youths challenging norms and systems by building trustless systems that bypass “third-party mechanisms” and censorship. Blockchain brought the intellectual revolution that Africa needed.
From Nigeria, Ghana, to Kenya, we’ve seen government agencies adopting blockchain in their practices. Cryptography Development Initiative of Nigeria, incorporating blockchain in Kenya’s transportation sector and integrating a blockchain data structure in Kenya’s health sector. This includes the numerous blockchain use cases that we have in Africa.
· Payment Systems
· Job Creation
· Art and Creator Economy
· Copyright Management system
We cannot forget the fact that the Central African Republic adopted the use of Bitcoin as a legal tender.
NEAR and its social good in Africa
Here are specific areas that NEAR has pushed for social good in Africa.
1. Green Africa
NEAR has been intentional about its interest in the African environmental status. NEAR interest in climate control and creating healthy earth earned NEAR the Climate Neutral Product from the South Pole. NEAR’s move to curb the spread of emissions and greenhouse gases is visible in its efforts in Africa.
As seen in the Kariba Forest Protection, Zimbabwe NEAR supported the green project in Africa that aimed at saving the forest, protecting wildlife, and making life better for humanity. The Kariba Project initiative covers close to 785,000 hectares of forests and sits on the southern shores of Lake Kariba, closely between the Zimbabwe-Zambia border. This was a timely approach to save Africa’s endangered species and offer improved environmental protection while providing improved clinic facilities and infrastructure.
All contributed to improving the well-being of Africans in these communities.
2. Training and Talents development
Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, has always emphasized NEAR’s commitment to enhancing African talent and skills. NEAR has always been excited about Africa’s potential avenue in the blockchain economy through innovations, education, and talent.
This pushes for collaborations with NEAR guilds, startups, and meets to introduce training and talent development sessions for Africans. We can see this in the launch of a regional hub in Kenya in collaboration with Sankore, a Kenyan-based blockchain community.
NEAR African talent and development programs extend to training talented Africans to become world-class blockchain developers. This will position Africans not only for opportunities that exist but for opportunities that will present themselves in the future.
3. Intervention Projects
From little “AMA sessions” to complex intervention projects, NEAR has always contributed its quota to helping Africa. We have numerous projects on NEAR that are dedicated to Africans.
The MetaBuild Hackathon covers African developers and the NEAR Kenyan regional hub launch to support African developers, projects, and talents. The partnership of NEAR and Sweatcoin has seen the launch of African-specific projects. There’s the 250 African water well project to give more than 250,000 Africans clean water, “30 billion steps” for clean water in Africa, and lots more.
4. Art and Creator Economy
Chapter One Foundation, an NGO built on NEAR by Africans and Canadians, has driven growth in the African art and creator economy. Its initiatives have helped to foster growth for African creatives in less fortunate situations through blockchain integrations and NFTs.
Why NEAR is doing things differently for Africans?
The numerous opportunities in Africa fund NEAR’s interest in Africans. Blockchain and Web 3 are virgin and fertile grounds in Africa. Investments made in this regard will yield tangible results. This has driven the need for NEAR to influence human resource development, implementing policies that offer Africans a fairground to grow and develop.
REFERENCES:
https://medium.com/nearprotocol/near-social-good-change-through-crypto-ca28c10447b
https://bee-together.org/education/
https://sweatco.in/i/mover97447294988/27520
https://interswitchgroup.com/assets/documents/Block_Chain_Technology.pdf
https://near.org/blog/near-climate-neutral-product/
https://www.southpole.com/projects/community-development-protects-forests
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