The green nation is becoming a blockchain development hub, with a combination of government initiatives & a young population ready to lead Africa into a more thriving, transparent & profitable future.
The world is filled with buzz words so often that people suddenly lose count of such words. There was the instance of the dotcom era, the millennium era and so much more. The term blockchain and blockchain technology, is obviously a word or term whose time has come and may not go away for a long period of time.
So what is blockchain? According to Euromoney blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across an entire network of computer systems, while this tends to take away the centralization of data built or stored on various computers and making them work with each other seamlessly.
However by inherent design, the data on a blockchain is unable to be modified which is called immutable, transparent and tamper proof.
This makes it a legitimate disruptor for industries like financial payments, cybersecurity, healthcare, governance, business, manufacturing and many other sectors.
The innovation attributed to blockchain technology has transformed the way businesses are managed and delivered. So many people misunderstand the concept of blockchain technology as such, seeing it basically only or primarily from the financial point of view in which cryptocurrencies were designed and created.
Blockchain is actually a whole new paradigm whereby all sectors can be developed and run uninterrupted as in the case of finance where people can actually move funds seamlessly globally without any intermediary or third party. Smart contracts can also be designed to help manage all the various transactions in a more automated manner.
Blockchain can be used for electoral processes like voting to ensure transparency and removal of election malpractices in the form of duplication of votes, although that use case is still far off in the horizon.
Blockchain can be utilized in the healthcare system whereby patients’ medical records can be secured and transmitted by encryption techniques, and properly facilitated in such a way that patients’ records can not be doctored or tampered with.
Essentially, blockchain can ensure truth and reliability in countless sectors worldwide.
In Nigeria, blockchain technology has already taken a firm root in a more dynamic way such that the Federal Government of Nigeria has set up a think tank to facilitate the government’s political will to implement the blockchain technology initiative with various tech hubs spearheading these initiatives.
There is also a Nigerian proposal to legislate for the inclusion of blockchain technology as a major part of the country’s educational system.
Such initiatives will in no doubt increase the awareness on the use and development of blockchain projects and deployment of many tech hubs across the country of Nigeria. This move has the ingredients to potentially make Nigeria among the countries with the highest number of blockchain tech hubs and creativity locations in the world.
In the month of May, in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, the first fully fitted blockchain hub with a standard crypto forensic investigation lab, Convexity Hub, was launched and showcased a huge number of interested blockchain professionals and enthusiasts. This was done to increase the number of tech hubs in Nigeria to attract foreign blockchain venture capitalists, and to encourage and increase the participation of young Nigerians who are good at development on blockchain programmes.
There are also several tech hubs scattered across the length and breadth of the Nigerian nation. Though East African countries like Kenya and Rwanda are gearing up to be among the best at blockchain communities or hubs on the continent, so competition is rising.
However, there is the “Never say die and can do spirit” found in the average Nigerian youth and this actually motivates Nigerians to ride to the very top and makes it likely for Nigerians to emerge from a sphere of influence in the blockchain technology space.
The Klever family in Nigeria has the potential of attracting the same blockchain developers from all over the world to the green nation with the potential of creating unique platforms using blockchain for their deployment.
In perspective, the best is yet to come for the youths of Nigeria in which they are indeed ready to transform such tech hubs to standard blockchain development centers or hubs for the transfer of knowledge, truth and transparency.
