Btrust Launches African Cohort for New Bitcoin Developers – Bitcoin Magazine
- ₿trust locates, trains and pays new Bitcoin developers in Africa to decentralize contributors around the world.
- The non-profit organization has identified its founding member who will focus on custody solutions that empower Africans to hold their own keys.
- ₿trust hopes to expand the program internationally.
₿trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the open source development of Bitcoin, is funding the development and education of new Bitcoin developers in Africa, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.
The ₿trust Africa Open Source Cohort will find, train and pay individuals for their time spent in the program while learning to build out necessary tools for the Bitcoin ecosystem. ₿trust continues to focus on countries with fewer Bitcoin developers, which means supporting newer contributors to the ecosystem. The challenge of new developers not being branded in open source development can often lead to developers causing harm, rather than offering constructive suggestions or championing necessary development changes.
The ₿trust cohort has created a framework to prevent these harmful scenarios through a five-point system where the nonprofit will be able to offer ongoing support to developers.
Thus, members of the cohort will receive a mentor – a technical guide through the chosen application of the developer, as well as supervision from an assigned manager to help each member. In addition, members will receive peer support through daily team-based activities; project relationships where ₿trust will openly communicate ongoing projects with cohort members, and finally, new cohort members will be contracted for one year with an option to renew to encourage long-term productivity. Additional support will be provided, including grants for hardware and travel to encourage community foundations.
Moreover, ₿trust has also identified its founding member – Vladimir Fomene. Fomene is a Cameroonian – West African – software engineer skilled in both Java Script and Rust. He previously worked as a full-stack engineer, and his first focus will be the Bitcoin Development Kit, which provides the necessary tools for developers to build cross-platform bitcoin wallets. With the aim of enabling Africans to keep the keys to their own bitcoin in mind, Fomene will largely focus on the development that promotes bitcoin custody solutions.
The forms described his initial reluctance to Bitcoin, and what ultimately drew him into it in a blog post.
“With the unfolding of the above events, it became clear to me that we had given governments too much power and they could abuse it through their wrongdoing or actions,” Formene said. “The people must take back some of that power or have systems that can keep the authorities in check.”
₿trust will continue to introduce newcomers to the ecosystem with a long-term vision to expand the program throughout the Global South.
