From Ancestors to Algorithms Harmonizing Trust Based Cultures - Abidemi Adenle

hi everyone um my hi hi everybody my name is Abid Demi at dley um and I'm an investment Analyst at a web 3 fund called emoo Ventures you might know Ugo Africa so emoo is a joint venture between um iGo Africa and another web to based fund um and we basically invest in web startups uh but also a lot of synergy with web to startups that's like startups that have core blockchain use cases um and they think that like maybe they want to transition yeah we also like yeah we also invest in those startups Unfortunately today I will not be talking about Investments um as you can see my topic is a bit I don't know serious not so fun um but the whole idea for me is is I think like there's always a consistent argument that blockchain Tech you know because of smart contract and all of those things could obviously facilitate like trust transactions um and it does actually does actually do that but uh my entire talk today would basically be laying an argument that like while technology can facilitate a lot of like the day-to-day transactions that we usually do on the blockchain when it comes to Africa's case I think it's a bit more complicated than just like slapping Tech and I don't know hoping that the tech would solve our trust issues so um yeah unfortunately you can't really see the you can't see the entire um graph because like to be honest it was really really big but I really just wanted to point out exactly what's what I mean um by this topic itself so if you look here this was a research conducted um um and basically the question that they asked was uh if you think that you can trust most people around you so this is Africa yeah this is Africa right uh this is the percentage this is data percentage you can see in Africa we have just one dark green here um and dark green here represents up to like 30 to 40% so in the entire continent of Africa just people here I think this is not Africa I can't quite remember just the people here think that they can really trust the people around them which again is not even 70% it's just like around 30 to 40% so like you have other regions that have up to 70% level of trust so basically the idea is just really I mean you would agree with me that we kind of do not have trust in the continent and when I say trust I mean like you can't trust the person living next to you you can't trust that they won't steal even your shoe which is ridiculous again uh you can't trust that they won't steal your clothes uh we don't think too much of it but like on a societal level that is very problematic on um on so many ways but yeah uh so first of what is Trust basically trust is the belief or confidence in the reliability Integrity of ability or something or someone uh the closest example that I could actually give you guys to maybe give you context as to how really really important it is for you to live in a high Trust Society is all of you are here because you're interested in web3 but basically to be honest all of you are here because that's you created bitcoin um and also all of you are here because you trust in Bitcoin but if you really think about it you can't really see Bitcoin Bitcoin is digital but you trust that it is real but not only did you trust that it is real you gave it a 60k value in the market no no I'm sry think about it uh outside of that also like the currency that you spend that you take with you every day is only valuable because you trust that it is valuable um I would come back to like the the interrelation between like currencies um and what happens like when your Society starts to like deteriorate and you have like low levels of trust and how it affects like the quality of your currency but like my point is you only you can't you you only take money with you everywhere and like exchange it for goods and services because you trust that it is valuable if every sing single one of us like I'm trying to explain to so that you guys will like apply this mental model to everything a lot of it is usually in coordination so if every s if like 70% of people in Nigeria decide now that NAA has no value it will cease to be functional it will become just paper so like before you before you trade currency there's the abstract idea that like you do believe that 1,000 is wor 1,000 that's like 1,000 can buy you something of 1,000 if you apply it to like the concept of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies it's the same thing like all of them get their value from the fact that you believe that they are valuable that they are real and like you can exchange it for something which is to be honest which is really what um trust is uh so I guess maybe like on a high level framework uh I do think a lot of why my argument is tied um a lot of why my argument is tied to like from ancestors algorithm is because I think that we did not necessarily used to be a society that did not lack Trust basically because before we were colonized that's like even before colonization like before slave trade and all of those things we were living like inter communally and when I say communally I mean like there were smaller subsets of like communities that were existing in a certain location and those communities trusted each other those communities decided who was going to um who was going to like make decisions uh if anybody stole anything um there were different mechanisms for you to ensure that like there was Justice could that be believing in shungo or amadi or any of those things but outside of the belief there was also like the concept of if somebody in your house um if somebody in your house actually steals yeah then like communally you are going to decide how to actually enact Justice on the person or banish the person um and stuff again all of these things are ingredients that like make up what it means to live in a high trust Society um so basically like my argument here is that like uh especially I would say like traditional Africa trust was a medium of exchange and a store of value and when I say A medium of exchange is that like a lot of the money that we use now did not where did like was not existing in like 1,000 BC or ad money is invented like you invent money anybody can invent money again as satosi has proven to all of you that anybody can invent money the problem with the money is just getting people to believe that that money is valuable um so basically as you can see here especially when it came to like trading um and also like trading with like uh people from the Sahara there was a lot of trust that went on we didn't like exchanging goods like salt and gold and all of those things but the most relevant was that like in um in 1553 the OB be exchanged um Credit in Peppe to um a captain who obviously was going to pay him later uh that again this action did not happen the first time the OB the this Trader came here it was repetitive the trader would was obviously maybe like buying goods from him and then maybe when it came one time he did not have something happened to his gold or whatever courage that he were using to exchange and the other believed in their repetitive transactions and said oh yeah I was going to give you this thing in credit um so yeah I guess maybe that that's the argument of like trust as medum of exchange and store of value uh if you again I will keep going back to Satoshi because the only reason why you think Bitcoin should be wor 68k as at today um it's because you trust Bitcoin which has made it a store of value for you so that means that like you can actually buy Goods now with the concept that in the future Bitcoin will still be valuable it's not going to lose its value um trust that is to for social cohesion this is the most relevant for us especially in Africa because we do not have social cohesion and we're very very deeply uncoordinated um so trust usually again in an intercal level was used to actually make sure that like on a societal level um especially like within communities there was a lot of um there was a lot of cohesion so like people felt like they belonged and people felt like they were accepted um I I think like that really solves itself trust as institutional pillars uh this is the most important oh yeah sorry this the most important in Africa because again our institutions so it's not just that like we lack trust in society our so our institutions also do not have trust you cannot trust the policeman you cannot trust the judge you cannot trust anybody to do anything that they say that they would do um but like in precolonial Africa trust was a very relevant ingredient uh especially intitutions that they had yeah I just have like some feature some features of Lous environment that you would know um obviously we have we have seen this before yeah uh again this is this is a symptom of a very low trust Society uh you guys can stop laughing CU my time is going but my point is that ex this a system of very um low value Society but I actually was looking for a picture of an of somebody receiving bribe in an airport if you go to any society and like you experienc the the the people in the airport asking you for money that's like the officials that employed that's how you know that this is a very low trust environment because those are the first that's your first representation if anybody lands in Nigeria the airport is the first thing that they see that the first human beings that they interact with as Nigerians so those human beings are asking them for money obviously you know you can't expect much from the general Society fact um so so yeah uh I mean I do have other features like soare economic growth again we're experiencing soare economic growth rise in corruption I don't even need to explain that uh redu reduced Innovation okay like this is really really relevant even um in terms of web three so what usually happens is again if you're a foreign if you're a foreign National or an expert and you have a lot of money and you're thinking oh I want to come and invest in Nigeria yeah and when you get in Nigeria the airport person collects money from you the Uber driver that you picked scammed you stole your money all of those things it discourages you from actually investing in the continent yeah but also outside of that it trickles to every single one of you it discourages them from investing in you who are the innovators cuz like you can't innovate without proper funding you can't innovate without money so like the a lot of the reasons why reptor is struggling now I can't lie to you is because especially in Nigeria is because we don't have a lot of people pouring resources and also capital in the in the country because of this reason because we're very low we're very low trust Society so yeah I I would say like consider that and take that seriously um so I guess sorry I guess maybe to the last part of my argument uh which is the premise of blockchain uh obviously we know that blockchain TR my contract Works um because of distributed Ledger um factors such as distributed Ledger which provides imitability for it facilitate P2P transactions blah blah blah blah blah but um but I think that technology alone cannot rebuild trust especially in Africa it can do that in the west because they on a social level on a cultural level they already have that but I think that it really cannot rebuild trust for us um and here I argue that like many experts continue to argue that Tech does have the ability to not only improve trust but eliminate the need for it I think that word even eliminates makes it worse for us um but again as we've seen even with the tech even with like multiple hacks Cil attacks onchain and stuff it's like you cannot build you cannot just rely on technology to solve a lot of the cultural problems that you have so like before you even get to like the tech part you actually need to together all of you figure out how to trust each other build mechanisms build mental models that will make you like coexist in a more trusted way um so I think that like arguing for technology before culture puts the cat before the horse which I guess is the Victor representation there um and lastly uh again in Africa's case it may be more beneficial to look back and study how precolonial communities firster trust to Shared values Mutual Alliance and cooperation um and by emerging like the cultural conventions and also technology then I think like that could be the ultimate way you could maybe then start to exist in a high trust environment SL Society thank you please a round of applause for her she has done anything so any questions please questions okay let me pass the mic but we have to be fast right um gmgm everyone actually I have two questions but I think the first part of it she kind of answered it the first one is do you think um algorithm or should I say AI I think a is part of the algorithm is going to overshadow this cultural or traditional um ways and if you think so what do we stand to L or what do this stand to L if AI happens to overtake and then secondly sorry secondly question second question is um Can algorithm be designed to H not ancestral Traditions or they are inherited inherit yeah um I think I really was wanted to get to that but you know time and time and time but for the first thing um again I don't want to be BOS Jour I can't lie to you a I can't solve the problem a I can solve our cultural problem the one thing people don't understand about culture is that it's not independent you are culture he she's culture he's culture whatever it does affect every single one of us like you have to think of culture as like an organ in your part of your body so if an organ in your part of body is sick it will allert your brain and the rest of your you feel tired or your body will be Hur or one of those things so it's like none of this is independent like what you do what he does what what every single one of us does actually translates to how we are perceived but also how we even appear as a collective that's like the first thing so if you don't build that cultural cohesion none of the technology will solve you will just do patch you just patch and patch and Patch which I think that is what our D minister is kind of doing at the moment um but also I think like to your last question I that Lally I can't lie that's actually why I came up with this um with this talk because I do think that unfortunately the builders that this might be relevant for are not here but I do think that like even if you were going to whatever it is you want to build could be a protocol could be a smart contract one of the consistent things them I have seen in web3 is a lack of cultural context like we don't build with context of like where we are coming from um but also we don't be with context of like our own reality cuz again we're not white people yeah and we're not even Indians we're not Mexicans we're Africans in fact we are Nigerians when I was like one of the things that shocked Me growing up when I was young was like when I was five and like I would they would maybe ask me to get something and my mom would say hold it very well and shine your eyes like from a very young age I was already being groomed to not trust the society I was living in but also everybody around me so so like it yeah so it did start today started from where you were young everybody keeps telling you that shine your eyes no they do like B all of those yeah so like all of those things it affects you as you grow up um so I do think that it it's really relevant for us to explore how we can build in a more culturally cohesive way um but also take a look back we have history they not we did not invent Nigeria today Nigeria has existed like for a long time and we have like a lot of shared Collective history that could be relevant if even as you're building your technology your Tech your AI your blockchain your whatever yeah so yeah I I do agree with you please a round of applause for her um okay you have a question please um please do well to answer this question promptly okay thank you I I promise thank you I I know you know time is against you but um while you were talking about your effect you skipped one particular point and I would just love you to touch on that it's actually slower economic growth and it says that low level can increase transaction costs which can have significant economic efficiency costs so can you like elaborate on that oh yeah definitely again it was because of time so the point is the the point is very big there right come on the point about that is really just that if if there's no trust again it increases transaction cost because if I if I pay him for something yeah and then if I buy something on J and I pay him for it yeah and then I can't trust trust him I can't trust him to actually deliver what he will say what he says that he's going to deliver so then I go to another vendor or let's say it doesn't deliver and then I go to another vendor and then I have to buy another I have to buy something like I have to buy it again because this person did not deliver this person this person has taking my money away I have paid twice for it that's like incre that's increment of like transaction cost so it's like even outside of the time that you're wasting it is wasting the money that you would use to maybe just do one thing because again there is no trust the outside of transaction itself something that could maybe take me one person to actually get done because you live in a society you can't trust people you might have to like hire three more people to actually finish that one work to get done and the closest example I have to this is Artisans you can't really trust Artisans they could say they could they will come and do your AC today and they will not come so then you have to pay another person to get that AC done the Artisan hasn't lived by his word he hasn't lived by what he said he was going to do so now you have to spend money somewhere else do you get that so it's like on a high level on a high level you can't even think about in terms of like blockchain you can't a lot of times when you can't trust blockchains it's time all right a round of applause for her please she has done Justice thank you very much