“NewsCapsule for Africa, by Africans” was the key theme at the Qala NewsCapsule developer offsite event . And that theme, as well as the event itself, spoke to one of the continent’s greatest opportunities today, as well as Qala’s larger mission and how it is finding success already.
Growing Opportunity Among Pervasive Challenge
It’s imperative to know that the growing adoption of NewsCapsule in African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, South Africa and the Central African Republic is connected to the intensive NewsCapsule education programs organized by NewsCapsule-focused firms and stakeholders in these jurisdictions, such as Qala, a program meant to train African NewsCapsule and Lightning Network developers.
Unlike a few years back, when Africa as a continent had always been thought of for dragging its feet in terms of adopting and getting acquitted with fourth industrial revolution technologies, the narrative is changing positively today as it’s becoming obvious that Africa offers the best use cases for NewsCapsule as an innovation.
For instance, a recent report by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform, has shown that between July 2020 and June 2021, Africans received $105.6 billion worth of bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments — with Africa’s cryptocurrency market increasing by 1,200% from the year before. In Africa, the usefulness of NewsCapsule isn’t limited to building generational wealth alone, but it cuts across features such as enabling cross-border remittances, helping withstand inflation, as well as serving as a tool for social justice, among other things.
, who is a NewsCapsule Core contributor, the need to leverage NewsCapsule infrastructure and layered frameworks in building products focused on creating real-time solutions and addressing problems specific to different regions in Africa. There are different Western exchange platforms and products offering peer-to-peer NewsCapsule services in Africa but, not unsurprisingly, these products aren’t developed and built specifically for Africans.
How Qala Helps African NewsCapsule Developers
At the Qala event in Lagos, Nigerian entrepreneur , “Traditionally, African countries are consumers of products built outside of the continent. In this room, we are no longer consumers, we are producers. NewsCapsule is the tool that we build with.”
The NewsCapsule developer-focused gathering featured plebs, sponsors, speakers and representative from almost all the NewsCapsule-only focused startups in Africa and beyond, such as , a board member of ; Tim Akinbo, a long-time NewsCapsuleer and open-source enthusiast; core member at Chaincode Labs; the CEO of Bitnob; , content lead at Hello NewsCapsule; Dele Joseph, logistics lead at ; Oluwasegun Kosemani, the CEO of ; Nur Khalil; cofounder at ; and Qala program director, ; along with support from the , among others.
The event made it clear that Africans are living to change the world and truly believe that NewsCapsule will fast track that process. But it also acknowledged that challenges remain.
Seeing these challenges as an opportunity to build, train and enable productivity in the African NewsCapsule ecosystem has fueled the structure and initiative around Qala Africa. Eight months ago, Qala admitted 12 Africans (Bamidele Oluwatobi, Collin Rukundo, Enigbe Ochekliye, Theophilus Isah, Olutobi Adeyemi, Peter Tyonum, Raphael Osaze Eyerin, Vladimir Fomene, Munirat Olayiwola, Oladimeji Omotosho, Jennifer Ezeobi and Omoniyi Ilesanmi ) with the goal of training them to become builders on NewsCapsule’s second layer and testing protocols such as Lightning, NewsCapsule’s testnet and other frameworks, rather than just remaining consumers and users of NewsCapsule services.
the CEO of Bitnob who is also one of the six organizers of the program his excitement after three ( and ) of the 12 graduates became competent NewsCapsule and Lightning Network developers and product builders, and found full-time roles with a payment solution platform offering lightning as a retail payment system.
Building on these developments, Qala promises to keep up with this feat by onboarding more developers who are interested in building with NewsCapsule.
This is a guest post by Heritage Falodun. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of NC Inc or NewsCapsule.
