Blockchain Training Spreads Across Africa – Quartz Africa

Silicon Valley-based startup Polygon is joining Africa’s blockchain revolution, aiming to support the continent in the next phase of blockchain advancements after millions of dollars were injected into the tech sub-sector last year.

Polygon, a Web3 blockchain network used by Meta, Adidas, Mercedes-Benz, Stripe and Reddit plans to train at least 2,000 professionals in ethereum blockchain development in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Rwanda. Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain network powered by the Ether token that allows users to trade crypto, earn interest on their investments through stakes, use and store non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and play online games.

This will add to efforts by other startups to equip Africans with blockchain skills such as the Africa Blockchain Institute, Blockchain Academy, African Blockchain Center, Knowledge Academy, United Africa Blockchain Association and Blockchain Research Institute Africa.

In July, at least 10,000 startups across Africa competed for $1 million to build innovative businesses around blockchain technologies in a partnership between Humanity Node Protocol (HNP), Web3Africa and Adanian Labs. Last year, 41 African blockchain startups in eight countries raised $127 million.

A growing demand for blockchain talent

Demand for blockchain developers is increasing on the continent, and startup founders believe the technology will anchor the continent’s efforts to solve some of the most pressing obstacles in fintech, agritech, healthtech, insurtech and edtech. Blockchain technology’s immutable nature creates new opportunities for transparent, decentralized and fraud-proof solutions.

“There are many financial complications in Africa. One of them is the transfer of money across countries. Through proper blockchain education, we believe that most of these complications can be solved using blockchain technology,” Shodipo Ayomide, Global Head of Developer Behavior at Polygon told Polygon Quartz.

Blockchain also has the potential to weed out allegations of rigging of the continent’s electoral systems as occurred in Sierra Leone in 2018, transform agriculture through tokenized farming support as in the case of IBM and Twiga Foods in Kenya, and create verifiable digital identity just like Cardano. blockchain helped residents of Zanzibar, Ethiopia and Burundi get digital IDs.

Blockchain’s potential after the “merger”

Blockchain developers are currently some of the highest paid software developers in the world, earning up to $172,000 per year. The global blockchain market was valued at $4.67 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow from $7.18 billion in 2022 to $163.83 billion by 2029. In 2018, there were 14 job openings for every blockchain developer in the United States.

Polygon says it aims to help African developers know how to make the ethereum blockchain faster and cheaper and is holding an eight-week bootcamp, consisting of a six-week learning and a two-week hackathon phase where they will build decentralized projects after the merger and compete for mentor prizes.

The merger means that programmers can now type out a command and timestamp it, while client-side blockchain developers can download the code and then the system executes the change on its own.

According to Ethereum CEO Vitalik Buterin, the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake is a transition the blockchain community has been working on for eight years, and after the merger, all kinds of blockchain projects will have more resources than before.

“And then there are these separate protocols that take this data as an ingredient and create like mini-Ethereums inside Ethereum, on top of that. These together would be able to process a much larger number of transactions. Instead of the roughly 20 transactions per second that Ethereum can process today, potentially between 5,000 and 100,000 transactions, Buterin told Wired.

Blockchain training in Africa

Polygon’s bootcamp will have two tracks: a beginner track and a mastery track. The Novice Track is open to developers new to the web3 space with the top developer having a chance to win $5,000 and prize money for the best projects as well.

The mastery category will focus on those who have some experience in the Web3 area. The first, second and third projects in the category will be awarded $10,000, $7,000 and $5,000 respectively.

“We see Web 3.0 as the only industry with the right technology to solve Africa’s many economic problems, and the only channel through which Africans can truly achieve financial freedom,” Dalip Tyagi, development team at Polygon, told Quartz.

The startup has also hosted various conferences across Africa, such as ETHsafari in Kenya, Africa Money & DeFi Summit in Ghana, and CryptoFest in South Africa, to educate Africans about the various possibilities of blockchain technology.

However, blockchain startups will have to offer attractive benefits to blockchain developers to keep them within the continent and working for African companies, otherwise they will be poached by Big Tech companies and add to the existing technological brain drain.

They will also need more funding to anchor Web3 technologies across the continent, but they will bet on Africa’s understanding of blockchain-related innovations such as crypto, NFTs, decentralized finance and central bank digital currencies, even as African governments struggle to regulate the ecosystem.

Africa is also warming up to other frontier technologies. Zindi is training the continent in AI and data science, BlackRhino is working with Meta to equip Africans in 16 countries with virtual/augmented reality skills, iLabAfrica is training youth in 3D printing techniques, while mobile network operators such as MTN, Vodacom and Safaricom are training Africa in 5G.