Africa is the next frontier for global advancement, and this is quite clear with the continent now outpacing many other regions for the adoption of emerging technologies, including digital currencies. At the BSV Global Blockchain Convention, two of the people leading efforts to have more governments and enterprises adopt blockchain in Africa went on stage to talk about their progress with bringing their homeland Nigeria, and eventually the rest of the continent, on chain on the BSV enterprise blockchain.
On the first day of the event, Geoffrey Weli-Wosu and Mohammed Ibrahim Jega were on stage to talk about better government and enterprise applications with BSV. The two are the founders of Domineum Blockchain Solutions, a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) provider based in London that focuses on BSV-powered applications. They were also appointed BSV ambassadors for West and East Africa earlier this year.
For Weli-Wosu, it all started in 2016 when he went back to Nigeria after spending several years in the United Kingdom. He quickly learned that one of the biggest challenges facing the government in the West African nation was the lack of digitization of public sector processes.
Through Domineum, Weli-Wosu is championing this drive towards digitized governance. As he told the audience, his mission is to “disrupt the public sector in Africa through incorporating distributed ledger technology solutions.”
Due to the low digitization of most services, Africans usually have to rely on third parties who act as middlemen between the citizens and the government. These middlemen have been known to exploit helpless citizens and demand hefty amounts of money in shady and corrupt dealings. But with a blockchain platform, citizens can deal more directly with the public agencies and access services in a safe, convenient, and efficient environment.
Jega said Domineum is focused on three verticals in its service delivery. The first is business-to-government, through which the startup has helped several governments digitize to “block leakages and increase efficiency.”
The second is business-to-business, through which the company helps companies streamline operations and cut costs, all in a bid to increase profitability.
Domineum has also focused on capacity building. Unlike the other two, this is not a direct service. Rather, the two entrepreneurs have been filling the blockchain skills gap that the region has had for a few years now.
Weli-Wosu and Jega have been leading initiatives to educate those in the public sector and the key decision-makers to enable them to understand what blockchain is and how it can change their operations. Key to this drive has been decoupling digital assets from blockchain, with many misguidedly thinking of speculative ‘to-the-moon’ assets whenever the technology is brought up.
They have also been educating the university students and equipping them with the skills that can allow them to be competitive in the blockchain ecosystem.
Domineum has three main products, the first of which is geared towards supply chain management, mainly for the marine sector which is the company’s cash cow, Weli-Wosu revealed. It helps the government tracks all containers coming in and moving out of its ports, with the most recent pilot being with the Sierra Leone Ports Authority.
The second product is focused on the land registry. Land ownership is a contentious issue in Nigeria and Africa at large, with corrupt officials exploiting the very opaque nature of land registry to bequeath themselves thousands of acres of land, usually at the peril of innocent citizens.
“This is where blockchain needs to come in, to help them digitize the entire land system and automate the processing,” Jega told the audience.
Domineum is also doing credential verification on BSV. This has primarily focused on educational and professional credentials. Many Nigerian students and young professionals have difficulty certifying their credentials, especially when they land opportunities outside their country, and Domineum is solving this. Currently, the company is conducting a pilot with Baze University in Nigeria.
Jega believes that Domineum may be the first to drive blockchain usage in Africa, but many more will follow. It’s time that Africans made products for Africa as they fully understand the challenges the continent faces firsthand and are best equipped to solve them, he concluded.
Watch the BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 1 here:
Watch the BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 2 here:
Watch the BSV Global Blockchain Convention Dubai 2022 Day 3 here:
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