Decentralization holds such a promise for Africa as a continent

The "dark" continent has missed out on so many developments enjoyed by the rest of the world in the past. The failure of the continent to largely industrialize is evident in the dilapidated infrastructure and the ever increasing poverty rate on the continent

The Blockchain has rekindled a hope in the next generation of Africans as such, that their adoption of it has been at a phenomenal rate. So many reasons are posited for this adoption, many believe it is the characteristics of decentralization that has spurred this growth

In 2020 Nigerian youth took part in their first ever “decentralized” protest, the anti police brutality protest popularly known as EndSARS. For the first time ever, the protests did not have an organizer or convener, who can easily be silenced by the government. This lack of a single point of failure for the protests was one of the reasons it was difficult for the Nigerian government to stop the protests.

The protest encapsulated all the promises of decentralization for the new NIgerians. One of the innovations of the protests was that cryptocurrency, primarily Bitcoin, was used to raise funds during the protests as the Central Bank was clamping down on bank accounts. The youth witnessed in real time the powerful effects of decentralization as the government could not stop the movement of money no matter what they tried to do.

Aside from fueling protests, decentralization holds a lot of promises for the continent.

It is believed in many quarters that decentralization and open data could go a long way in enhancing quality of life in Nigeria and Africa. Elections are still extremely contentious. The most recent election in Nigeria was so farcical there are still numerous litigations surrounding the process, months after the election and it places a huge question mark on the legitimacy of the incoming government.

The electoral body promised an open election, with the use of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS)  for voter accreditation and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), all which should have made it impossible for non-accredited parties to participate in the elections and allowed the electorate to monitor the election results in real time, and for the collation of the votes to have been in an open and transparent manner. Needless to say all that did not happen

Over voting and other irregularities which has been the bane of elections all over Africa marred the election and the election results were not uploaded to the IReV portal as was promised. This failure of delivering an election that was promised to the people is due to the centralized nature of the design of the system. Once the Independent National Electoral Commission failed, the whole enterprise was doomed to fail. This would not have been the case if a public ledger approach had been adopted for the elections.

Government budgets and public expenditure tracking is another area decentralization can assist in ending the woes of African nations. Transparency and accountability, core tenets of decentralization and open data will undoubtedly ring the death knell of the unbridled corruption which is the hallmark of literally every country in Africa.This transparency allows citizens and civil society organizations to monitor government activities, detect corruption, and hold public officials accountable. By shining a light on government actions and spending, open data helps to prevent fraud and misuse of public resources. A decentralized public ledger would ensure that the system is resistant to manipulation. This would go a long way to improving the confidence of the citizens in the system.

Improved confidence will undoubtedly increase citizen participation, as open data actively empowers citizens by providing them with accurate and timely information about government policies, services, and performance. Having such information encourages citizens to make informed decisions, engage in public debates, and actively participate in the governance processes. Citizens can use open data to contribute to policy-making, or collaborate on community development initiatives.

The importance and benefits of decentralization to the people of Africa is not limited to the relationship with the government only. Blockchain technology has contributed immensely to Africa’s financial inclusion. For decades making payment for goods and services from Africa to the rest of the world has been a problem. Sending money from Africa via the banks and traditional financial systems is one of the most difficult things to do, and it is still restricted to import/export and in rare cases payment of medical bills and school fees. With decentralization and the blockchain, this is largely a thing of the past. The major bottlenecks of cross border money transfer created by the gatekeepers of the system, the banks, is easily bypassed with the use of cryptocurrency. The aforementioned EndSARS protests were funded by both Nigerians who live in Nigeria as well as Nigerians living in diaspora.  

Asides from these benefits that decentralized systems offer another innovative way decentralization has been of tremendous help to Africans is through decentralized philanthropy. Decentralized philanthropy or DePhi is a growing aspect of progressive decentralization. A model  for this type of philanthropy was recently created by Richie Laburn, the cofounder of Index Africa. The approach adopted involves  staking on a blockchain and using the rewards for philanthropic enterprise. By partnering with a non-profit organization in South Africa, the Good Work Foundation, which has a simple mission: to provide access to world-class education to young learners in rural South Africa. Using the rewards from staking, they provide a year of tuition to numerous children through the Good Work Foundation’s Open Learning Academy (OLA)

All of this does not posit that decentralization is the silver bullet that will cure all that ails Africa, and does not pretend that a myriad of problems that will arise from the wholesale adoption of blockchain technology in Africa does not exist. 

For one, the widespread illiteracy on the continent has been a huge barrier to a large-scale adoption of technology generally. Even though the use of smartphones in Africa has a high teledensity penetration, computer literacy is still extremely poor, which will hinder the adoption of blockchain technology and decentralization in general. This would become a bigger problem with migrating to the blockchain, which requires the management of cryptographic keys and wallet addresses to cite a few issues. All in all, user experience of the blockchain and decentralized applications has to improve tremendously before decentralization can be adopted on a larger scale in Africa

Infrastructure is another area where the adoption of decentralization in Africa will have an issue. The continent is still lagging behind the rest of the world in the area of constant electricity, with most nations in the sub-saharan region lacking this most basic utility that is a stable power supply. This lack of electricity will remain a huge stumbling block for the deployment of a decentralized network locally as blockchain technology requires significant computational power and energy consumption.

Some may even highlight other problems which beset the adoption of blockchain technology in other countries, not just in Africa. As an emerging technology, blockchain and decentralization has a number of issues which are hampering its adoption in various countries around the world. Problems of regulation of the different blockchains has been an issue for numerous governments all over the world, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission recently branding a number of blockchains as securities trading firms and  in essence making their operations answerable to the laws governing the trading of securities in the US.

Then there is the question of privacy. The primary purpose of  blockchain technology is to provide transparency and immutability. Public blockchains store transaction details that are visible to all participants, potentially compromising sensitive information. Although there are privacy-focused blockchain solutions, striking a balance between privacy and transparency remains a challenge.

As well as all of the aforementioned, there is always the threat of malicious exploitation, with various blockchains being victims of security breach,exploitation of weak code and sybil attack, as there will always be malicious players with intentions that leave a lot to be desired. On a continent like Africa currently faced with a number of security issues, this would really be adding more to the existing financial and data security issues the continent is facing

.In all sincerity the problems arising from blockchain technology and decentralization are not enough for it to be discarded as a panacea to the issues it can help Africans overcome. The next generation of Africans can sincerely look to decentralization and a hope for a future much better than that which they currently experience. A future with inclusion in governance and a democratized access to information, which should drive education and literacy on the continent

Transparency and accountability of public officials, to protect the state treasuries from looting and ensure resources are transparently and adequately allocated, eliminating unnecessary waste. Social innovation that is driven by decentralization to find alternative local solutions to local problems, fostering a whole new generation of entrepreneurship, driving economic growth and social development at the same time. 

Greater financial inclusion which is already being enjoyed by African migrants worldwide, with decentralization making remittance of money back home to Africa easy, and eliminating exorbitant charges from traditional channels. 

Decentralization holds such a promise for Africa as a continent

The "dark" continent has missed out on so many developments enjoyed by the rest of the world in the past. The failure of the continent to largely industrialize is evident in the dilapidated infrastructure and the ever increasing poverty rate on the continent

The Blockchain has rekindled a hope in the next generation of Africans as such, that their adoption of it has been at a phenomenal rate. So many reasons are posited for this adoption, many believe it is the characteristics of decentralization that has spurred this growth

In 2020 Nigerian youth took part in their first ever “decentralized” protest, the anti police brutality protest popularly known as EndSARS. For the first time ever, the protests did not have an organizer or convener, who can easily be silenced by the government. This lack of a single point of failure for the protests was one of the reasons it was difficult for the Nigerian government to stop the protests.

The protest encapsulated all the promises of decentralization for the new NIgerians. One of the innovations of the protests was that cryptocurrency, primarily Bitcoin, was used to raise funds during the protests as the Central Bank was clamping down on bank accounts. The youth witnessed in real time the powerful effects of decentralization as the government could not stop the movement of money no matter what they tried to do.

Aside from fueling protests, decentralization holds a lot of promises for the continent.

It is believed in many quarters that decentralization and open data could go a long way in enhancing quality of life in Nigeria and Africa. Elections are still extremely contentious. The most recent election in Nigeria was so farcical there are still numerous litigations surrounding the process, months after the election and it places a huge question mark on the legitimacy of the incoming government.

The electoral body promised an open election, with the use of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS)  for voter accreditation and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), all which should have made it impossible for non-accredited parties to participate in the elections and allowed the electorate to monitor the election results in real time, and for the collation of the votes to have been in an open and transparent manner. Needless to say all that did not happen

Over voting and other irregularities which has been the bane of elections all over Africa marred the election and the election results were not uploaded to the IReV portal as was promised. This failure of delivering an election that was promised to the people is due to the centralized nature of the design of the system. Once the Independent National Electoral Commission failed, the whole enterprise was doomed to fail. This would not have been the case if a public ledger approach had been adopted for the elections.

Government budgets and public expenditure tracking is another area decentralization can assist in ending the woes of African nations. Transparency and accountability, core tenets of decentralization and open data will undoubtedly ring the death knell of the unbridled corruption which is the hallmark of literally every country in Africa.This transparency allows citizens and civil society organizations to monitor government activities, detect corruption, and hold public officials accountable. By shining a light on government actions and spending, open data helps to prevent fraud and misuse of public resources. A decentralized public ledger would ensure that the system is resistant to manipulation. This would go a long way to improving the confidence of the citizens in the system.

Improved confidence will undoubtedly increase citizen participation, as open data actively empowers citizens by providing them with accurate and timely information about government policies, services, and performance. Having such information encourages citizens to make informed decisions, engage in public debates, and actively participate in the governance processes. Citizens can use open data to contribute to policy-making, or collaborate on community development initiatives.

The importance and benefits of decentralization to the people of Africa is not limited to the relationship with the government only. Blockchain technology has contributed immensely to Africa’s financial inclusion. For decades making payment for goods and services from Africa to the rest of the world has been a problem. Sending money from Africa via the banks and traditional financial systems is one of the most difficult things to do, and it is still restricted to import/export and in rare cases payment of medical bills and school fees. With decentralization and the blockchain, this is largely a thing of the past. The major bottlenecks of cross border money transfer created by the gatekeepers of the system, the banks, is easily bypassed with the use of cryptocurrency. The aforementioned EndSARS protests were funded by both Nigerians who live in Nigeria as well as Nigerians living in diaspora.  

Asides from these benefits that decentralized systems offer another innovative way decentralization has been of tremendous help to Africans is through decentralized philanthropy. Decentralized philanthropy or DePhi is a growing aspect of progressive decentralization. A model  for this type of philanthropy was recently created by Richie Laburn, the cofounder of Index Africa. The approach adopted involves  staking on a blockchain and using the rewards for philanthropic enterprise. By partnering with a non-profit organization in South Africa, the Good Work Foundation, which has a simple mission: to provide access to world-class education to young learners in rural South Africa. Using the rewards from staking, they provide a year of tuition to numerous children through the Good Work Foundation’s Open Learning Academy (OLA)

All of this does not posit that decentralization is the silver bullet that will cure all that ails Africa, and does not pretend that a myriad of problems that will arise from the wholesale adoption of blockchain technology in Africa does not exist. 

For one, the widespread illiteracy on the continent has been a huge barrier to a large-scale adoption of technology generally. Even though the use of smartphones in Africa has a high teledensity penetration, computer literacy is still extremely poor, which will hinder the adoption of blockchain technology and decentralization in general. This would become a bigger problem with migrating to the blockchain, which requires the management of cryptographic keys and wallet addresses to cite a few issues. All in all, user experience of the blockchain and decentralized applications has to improve tremendously before decentralization can be adopted on a larger scale in Africa

Infrastructure is another area where the adoption of decentralization in Africa will have an issue. The continent is still lagging behind the rest of the world in the area of constant electricity, with most nations in the sub-saharan region lacking this most basic utility that is a stable power supply. This lack of electricity will remain a huge stumbling block for the deployment of a decentralized network locally as blockchain technology requires significant computational power and energy consumption.

Some may even highlight other problems which beset the adoption of blockchain technology in other countries, not just in Africa. As an emerging technology, blockchain and decentralization has a number of issues which are hampering its adoption in various countries around the world. Problems of regulation of the different blockchains has been an issue for numerous governments all over the world, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission recently branding a number of blockchains as securities trading firms and  in essence making their operations answerable to the laws governing the trading of securities in the US.

Then there is the question of privacy. The primary purpose of  blockchain technology is to provide transparency and immutability. Public blockchains store transaction details that are visible to all participants, potentially compromising sensitive information. Although there are privacy-focused blockchain solutions, striking a balance between privacy and transparency remains a challenge.

As well as all of the aforementioned, there is always the threat of malicious exploitation, with various blockchains being victims of security breach,exploitation of weak code and sybil attack, as there will always be malicious players with intentions that leave a lot to be desired. On a continent like Africa currently faced with a number of security issues, this would really be adding more to the existing financial and data security issues the continent is facing

.In all sincerity the problems arising from blockchain technology and decentralization are not enough for it to be discarded as a panacea to the issues it can help Africans overcome. The next generation of Africans can sincerely look to decentralization and a hope for a future much better than that which they currently experience. A future with inclusion in governance and a democratized access to information, which should drive education and literacy on the continent

Transparency and accountability of public officials, to protect the state treasuries from looting and ensure resources are transparently and adequately allocated, eliminating unnecessary waste. Social innovation that is driven by decentralization to find alternative local solutions to local problems, fostering a whole new generation of entrepreneurship, driving economic growth and social development at the same time. 

Greater financial inclusion which is already being enjoyed by African migrants worldwide, with decentralization making remittance of money back home to Africa easy, and eliminating exorbitant charges from traditional channels.