Africa is outpacing the US and Europe in its adoption of blockchain technology which could make it “richer than Western nations”, claims Cardano boss Charles Hoskinson.

Hoskinson has a vision to rebuild the social and economic infrastructure of African nations with blockchain technology.

speaking in the financial times crypto and Digital Assets Summit, Cardano’s founder said there was “more demand than supply” for his services within the world’s developing nations.

At the time of writing the price of cardano (USD-ADA) is $0.53 and has a market capitalization of $18 billion.

Cardano sees the deeply entrenched centralized infrastructure that underpins Western nations as a hurdle that African nations can jump on their way to becoming web3 giants.

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Speaking to Yahoo Finance, John O’Connor, director of African operations at Global ROHe said: “DeFi certainly has enormous potential for developing nations, especially those that do not yet have legacy infrastructure that impedes rapid innovation and can make blockchain deployments more seamless.”

Cardano sees an opportunity in Africa’s younger population, who are eager to adopt new technologies faster than their aging counterparts in the global north.

Instead of relying on legacy governance systems, which are centralized and can yield to corruption, African nations could unleash the untapped potential of millions of people with automated blockchain protocols.

In Cardano’s vision for Africa, code is king and “code transcends government, and if the government tries to move it in a particular direction, it can’t,” Hoskinson added.

In it financial times in London, described the chains of poverty that blockchain can unlock, as its algorithms “don’t care who you are or where you are, whether you’re a Senegalese farmer or Bill Gates,” they just get the job done.

Cardano blockchain algorithms enable smart contracts that could bring financial inclusion to billions across the African continent.

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The ability to prove your identity, your educational qualification, your rightful ownership of land, or the ability to access loans is a luxury that citizens of the US and Europe take for granted.

In Africa, hundreds of millions of people do not have a bank account, access to reasonable credit, definitive proof of qualifications, and proof that they own the land or home where they have lived for generations. Because the centralized government has failed them.

Cardano has set out to fix this poverty trap and overtake African nations to not only compete with the West, but become world leaders “in AI and advanced robotics.”

In the past, the fate of billions of Africans has been decided in the boardrooms of the West and on the golf courses where the power elite play. But, Hoskinson has news for them, the blockchain is “not influenced by the politics of the day or the geopolitics of big nations over small ones.”

Hoskinson explained that when the Cardano protocols are installed, “this is how it stays and the users own the assets.” He added: “We have more demand than supply, and there are now over 900 decentralized applications deployed in the Cardano ecosystem, with many involved in the GoveTech business, people see an opportunity there.”

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But what will now control the fate of billions living in Africa if its social, economic and governmental fabric yields to the power of the blockchain? How can citizens be sure that the codified protocols that guide their lives are not, in turn, guided by bad actors?

Cardano’s John O’Connor stated that the blockchain is likely secure and not susceptible to manipulation by powerful groups. He added that “its protocol is guaranteed to be secure as long as 51% of its native ADA cryptocurrency stake is held by honest participants, which, in addition to other novel concepts, is achieved through random selection of leaders.”

He added that: “Governance is an essential step in the Cardano roadmap. This roadmap has five stages: founding, decentralization, smart contracts, scaling, and governance.” He outlined a Cardano governance system that would make impactful decisions on software upgrades, technical improvements, and funding decisions, to ensure “that the blockchain remains democratic.”

Cardano would enable a decentralized banking system that can provide microcredit to people who have no credit or transaction history. By tracking peer-to-peer transactions, the blockchain will create an individual’s transaction history. O’Connor added that “when it comes to unbanked populations in developing economies, there is a real problem with people in rural areas who lack access to major financial services. DeFi (decentralized finance) is a great tool to help improve economic inclusion.

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Falsification of land ownership documents is a problem in the African property market and due to regime change it is extremely difficult to prove property claims made under previous regimes or after civil wars.

According to O’Connor, Cardano plans to help eradicate the problem of land and property fraud by “storing property titles on the blockchain so that users can access these documents with only a mobile phone and can be sure that they are safe and cannot be manipulated. with”.

He added: “This may be of particular benefit to refugees who may need to prove ownership of their land on return home, if these documents are stored in a digital ledger, they cannot be lost or tampered with thanks to the security of the blockchain. Cardano is provably secure thanks to Ouroboros, a blockchain protocol we designed, which features mathematically verifiable security against attackers.”

Cardano is not the only organization that is pushing for the future of Africa to be based on blockchain. President of Tingo International Holdings Chris Cleverly also spoke to Yahoo Finance and described Africa’s cryptocurrency market growing over 1,200% in 2021, “the fastest rate in the world.”

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Tingo aims to offer much-needed credit to the unbanked in Africa through blockchain-registered micro-loans through a pioneering SMS network where an internet connection is not even required.

More than half of Africa’s population has access to a mobile phone and Tingo’s new KamPay service will allow people to send and receive funds for their goods and needs through a secure distributed blockchain.

Cleverly added that the blockchain service will reach millions of farmers in Africa with its SMS technology to provide microloans for as little as $2 USD.

Cleverly describes that blockchain has “a huge role to play in solving some of our world’s biggest challenges, such as addressing food security and facilitating economic development.” And he added that this technology is already here, “not a distant, vague and misunderstood concept or vision.”

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Cardano has been slow to get the starter block off the ground, being years behind pioneers like rival Ethereum, but they believe building the web3 world will not be a 100 meter race.

O’Connor said that as Cardano has developed slowly, with each step forward backed by peer-reviewed research, the blockchain “is now mature enough to support a blockchain solution that can scale to serve the entire blockchain.” national population”.

There is an expression that a day in crypto is equivalent to a year in traditional finance, and proponents of rival blockchains have criticized Cardano for languishing in development for what seemed like forever.

But, to understand Cardano’s painstaking strategy of rigorous research and development, it’s appropriate to recall a saying by Abraham Lincoln, “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Cardano began life in 2015, and until recently the developer team has been sharpening that axe, but now the blockchain proof-of-stake is starting to go live, with the first blow landing in Africa.

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