Impact Summit 💥 Ethereum Needs Africa's Developers

[Music] good evening from lios uh sorry about the lightning like I'm still like doing a lot renovation in my studio so like not not a good one but then Happ Happ to be speaking today about why African why ethereum needs Africa and before going into why I just do a little bit of introduction about myself my name is AI I'm the founder we3 Bridge we was founded in 2019 as an offshot of 1 million developer call that was made by Joseph luin after Deon 5 so I saw an innocent tweet okay I was following up I was following defon 5 on Twitter and I saw the call about a million Dev by Joseph and in that comments in that on that tweet I made a comment that African has the intellect and the population to make 1 million developer happen and someone saw the tweet and reached out and that was our Bridge became a te started 500 Nigerian de for ethereum our goal at the time was to only train 500 Developers for ethereum as part of the one million developer we needed to train but then it's been it's been an amazing run since 2019 is the the vision the program became four years uh last last this month on the fourth and we we've been we've trained over50 web3 developers I to say that for each Global aaton happened one person from Nigeria from Africa that have come through Bridge has been there so let's quickly talk about why e in Africa before we talk more about the impact that we so Africa is Africa has 54 countries and we have a very young population which means that we are energetic people our population keeps growing because people keep giving bir to people to young children every time and at each point Africa is being treated like as as as as a consumer but uh blockchain and web3 has made us to understand that we are no more we are no more consumers we want want want more an average African an average Nigerian for example want more more in sense that they want to make money they want to be able to contribute they want to be able to put their voice out and this has prized over the years we've been training Developers for four years and it's amazing to see that these guys have the energy to drive and put Africa on on the spotlight you train developers across Nigeria Kenya Uganda South Africa uh Zimbabwe and Zambia and these guys are each day doing something like great so what exactly do we need this people these people need ethereum eum need them because we have the numbers the numbers we have here are like Africa is one place that you can feel the impact of web three are you talking about the Bitcoin adoption I think the the last the last last statistics this shows even for metam mask this shows that the largest download for metam mask come from Africa and Nigeria specifically because these people are like hungry for more to send I was on a group this evening where someone was asking for who has a platform to send money from Nigeria to Cameroon for example so Nigeria needs Africa as a whole needs blockchain because we going to be the biggest user of this solution we we are the one that using USD because we have a dollar problem in the continent in Nigeria for example n n keeps growing up and down but then as just making these people users these people's energy needed to also grow ethereum because they have energy the population is there like for example if there a solution let's say solution like metam Mass trust wet and other all of this solutions are like like adopted as much as that in Nigeria and Africa and I can tell you honestly that we have less than 20% of Nigerians or Africans that have that have gotten used to what blockchain is three is so imagine we have like 50% automatically our 1 million Drive I think almost every chain are now doing one 1 billion users one billion users will not come from Europe truth because the population is here so one billion user will come from Africa Nigeria Kenya Ghana zimb these are where the numbers come from because we have the humanitarian needs we have the industrial need we have all of these need so imagine that we can break our technology into this ecosystem automatically our users are just sure because they are there the marketing is easy the the fund of marketing is not so much as you spend in EUR because like the Billboards are not so expensive not that they are not they are not so expensive so the population is there for ethereum to use also the buness like I I've over the years we've had people say African prince African prince African prince but then this guys are not just Africans that are doing all of these things but honestly it's just because these guys are bold like they can boldly work into a br like here we are here we are Nigerians we are Africans this is what we are this is what we can do and all of those we need to an this energy and bring them into the ecosystem I've seen guys that I've seen guys who came into web for example let than one year started contributing to different layer Tools in ethereum and these guys are not just contributing as developers no they are also like writing PE for documentations and all of those stuff and getting mared because they have the boldness to say okay I can think this through I can learn this through and in less than one years blockchain developers they are contributing this much so imagine that these guys get to become protocol developers let's see what they going to bring to the table now perspective I'm sure a number that was a joke that happened on Twitter like on X sorry last week where someone from the Bitcoin Community was saying uh Africans are Africans are like living in the mod than all it shows that a number of people don't really know how African is so while we are writing our EIP we writing our protocols our rollups they did not factor in most Africans but then we need more African into the protocol system into the organizations so that they can bring the perspective perspective that tells about okay this is who we are we have different markets so we captured Europe because we know oh Europe as this that that L time is also almost well represented now we need to have more Africans that that tell the story so that when you are writing an EIP they can tell you okay so this node needs this to work because this is what this is going to this how going so we need the perspective from Africa that's why I believe that African needs African needs eum needs Africa and I believe that so since so I think sometimes two months ago or three months ago as Le I've seen quite a number of Africans incred Africans come contrib like seeing developers come and go through we bridge and other sister partners that we have we have we partner with universities we partner with different like organizations in Nigeria across Africa I think we're doing some three Africa working with three ladies work mem all of these projects are working day and night to bring more developers into the ecosystem what that does is for more African developers we bring into the system we bringing new perspective we are bringing people who understand their own environment and they can they can redefine defy in the way def is into how the system works there a lot of things that happen in Africa that doesn't happen in Europe for example the ISU the a like all of these things I believe that one of the sucess story of DS we've had are not from this environment because most of the Dow system are not designed to like understand this environment but then if we can incorporate the cooperative societies that like have been within the African continent from centuries and bringing into the Dow system we see how successful this is going to work so this perspective is one of the things that we need to bring into ethereum bring into other ler to so I believe that Africa needs ethereum and ethereum needs Africa because not just the population like I I I I kept seeing us talk about like I'm actually fascinated to see about the 1 million Developers stri and as much as possible uh every African like every African is looking for in web 3 now they're looking for how do they contribute all of us like personally my story is very funny because I came in chasing a drop in 2017 and 2018 I decided no I'm not going to chase Head Drop anymore I'm going to contribute and contributing into the space have not just made me own web to the bridge I've worked with projects idro push like I've done all of this things and while I was doing that I was like okay so this is the solution we have here how do we domesticate the solution because we need to take the solution to our people and for every developer that I've seen I've come through everyone has come through in different ways it's e to say okay we want this person to contribute B on this and this but then everyone in Africa has a different story to tell every African country has different specifics that specific to them someone from Ghana is a bit different from someone from Nigeria some Kenya is from someone from Ganda and we cannot assume that because we work with someone from Nigeria for example we have it all no we need someone from every of this country any of this continent so that we can have a perspective change good news is that we have now online communities where everyone belongs to and we can now share cultures and traditions we need the population in Africa we need the perspective there there's there is saying that Africa is poor but you know the good part is Africa is not poor the resources we have in Africa alone is enough to make the world boom but then there's a lot there's a need for reinvestment here there the African is one place where impact will come like Africa is one place where Africa is one place where we get impact the impact here is like if you do I've seen I've seen a lot of say oh we're doing x million whatever whatever in this place but then if you put a million doar in African markets for example to onboard not just developers but say you want to on board web three people you'll be shocked that this web three people that you onboard as Community managers in another one year are already aspiring by themselves without have motivated to become protocol developers now these protocol developers are already thinking okay what next so I've done it all I've seen it all what next so we need that perspective we need Africans are able to read vitalic papers and able to like break them down into bits and like Okay so we've read about quadratic funding what's quadratic funding doing generally like I I like I love the way where Kevin breaks down uh these documents but then we need more Africans that understand this that breaks down that is when ethereum become like a voice like coming to Africa you see that a lot of chains that are not evm chains are doing well here because they understand what the market is like for example the market share that bance have in Africa I'm not sure any other protocol has it anywhere ethereum need Africans to penetrate this like we need we need to trust Africans to do this and why we do that we be surprised at the result and I tell people it's not just about now like one one of one of the issues I've seen us have in the communities that you want to have like okay what what what what's the result going to be now is a longterm goal what's the long-term goal of eum in Africa we want to onard 1 billion 1 million developer in Africa in how many years 15 years 20 years how do we want to break it down what 6 months 5 months one year two years 3 years Focus that will get us to that point if we brige Al has train over50 developers directly in four years and we have jointly with other project Partners trained almost 800 600 people that are now like working as developers researchers Dev and all of those stuff imagine we have web Bridge all across Africa like 54 countries in Africa let's say we divide into Zone the English speaking country the frankophone or do the East the west division and we have Bridge duplicated in all of these systems we'll be shocked at the results we will see we be shocked at the the reward we will see from the grant level like the product we will see the quality of we is going to be more like we we have on board in Nigeria for example we've had laser all of this Stu we need more of this how do we get more of this guys these guys are going to be the on who on board the Africans because they understand the African Market Market most of our Layer Two protocols most of our protocols per do not really understand what's on ground I'm happy that having people come in now it's also like very shocking that most of the guys from Africa find it hard to go out to Europe to the United States of America to talk about what is happening on ground because Visa is own problem like I I've seen over seven person that denied visa for death connect for example and these guys needed to have their voice over there so we to also start bringing this events down Africa to discourse not just do a telegram thing a lot of things go missing in Telegram and disc because a lot of assumptions but when you come on the ground you can see the impact yourself it's E when you drop like a drop of water air you see the impact more because the level is dry Sandy and you can see how the sand is absorbing the water that's why I believe that etherum needs Africa because Africa has the population and I still maintain the int to give e new shape I'm seeing my my friend and brother sh is very amazing St on protocol level and that's that's our goal we need to get so many people into that level and imagine that we get so many AF African let's say we have 50 protocol developers from Africa that are working on E eum protocol imagine perspective thank you very much I'll take questions and for impact has done so amazing well we have I'm I'm sure for each Global you have Bridge alumni there I'm sure for every protocol every Discord group you have web Bridge alumni there either the one that finishes or the one that came through that land through we Bridge so I'm happy to see us taking making Global changes I believe that another two years the story from Africa is going to change because in two years we're going to have a number of Africans we've add 150 from bridge 300 from other places we need to get to a point where we have more protocol guys like they've done solidity they've done uh this this that that let's get them to protocol let's put them together let's give them the access let's give them the funding let's give them the community sometimes they don't even need funding they need a community that opens to them that's ready to like push their ideas let's push their product I'll be shocked at the results we see in the community Bridge is a 16 weeks boot camp that trains web three developers we started 2019 and at some point we that a number of web two developers are not ready to come into web 3 so what we did is that we created a pipeline where we train Web Two developers who are ready to come into web 3 so we have two sources where we get our web 3 deps from from our own training program in web two so we train people that doesn't understand coding at all development at all we bring them into web three through the web2 program or existing Web Two developers already have like 5 years two years 3 years experience seven years and come into it so 16 weeks we start from uh we do solidity majorly train solidity majorly in 16 weeks we do front end then we do we do security this week presently the cour that is ongoing is security and the security what they doing now at the end of this week they start their own product so we allow them to bring their idea they build product in three weeks so over the years what we've done we have like accumulated experiences we've drawn n c successfully now understanding that our goal is not just to train web 3 developers as solidity developers is like bring them from Web Two to web 3 and when they are comfortable in web 3 move them up the ladder the ladder being lad now is move them to protocol developer them to own their own startup them to work other protocols them to do more for Africa like focus focus also uh sorry I think I'm like L of sound so also with believe that if we train African developers they understand the continent and at some point after they've gone and gain experience working around the globe they bring this experience back to grow the ecosystem here in Nigeria in Africa so we don't Master Class Master Class focus on this what do Master Class master class is so you have a protocol that is launching say an EV protocol that is launching for example let's take St stet for example STW we spoke with them at some point we okay they Cairo language and there are very few developers working on Cairo we bring we brought them in we did the master class brought developers from web bridge and other sister program that training developers together we train these people and the good part is that the guys that that pass through the Cairo program since Cairo program finished are like looking for are like contributing at high level to Cairo to Cairo as a product and as a protocol at this point in fact I there was there was a tweet that I saw a month ago when the Lambda class Lambda class partner with Cairo partner with Cairo and Lambda saying they're going to bring their office to Nigeria because they've worked with developers Kyo developers from Nigeria who came through web threebridge to do Cairo master class so the master class focus on helping developers of skill to become more better developer so we do that we do that with partnership with protocols and all then also our numbers are like there jointly one one one of the things that making one of the things that African needs at this point is that we do not have the privilege of the West you cannot do the experiment of the West because of funding and all those stuff so we we we are seeing these guys move from someone that that needs like crumbs to own a of bread now they can afford to like buy their own bread can afford to make their own egg and now they can to say okay let's put this together and let's move on so like bridge over as alumni I was doing a number alumni has like done over a million 1.6 million doar in salaries in just four years now imagine we imagine duplicating this across board and see the level of impact we are bringing to Africa so benefit is open we are lowering the of Entry because we Bri is teaching all for free like we do we house this developers we feed them we provide accommodation we solve the problem of electricity we Sol of Internet their goal is come into we brid stay here and build stay here and learn for 16 weeks when they are done we provide continuous monitoring monitoring in we just do a check to say how are you how are you doing okay what's what's the problem you facing and all of those stuff one also we create a community where they can always run to where they have problem so those are those are those are some of the things they doing and so far we have sustained through grants and support from eum the network uh gitcoin polygon and all this stuff so we we we are working to do more we are partnering with other projects to do more we are presently working with a. HQ a is a a a is a sister program they they also training developers and they they working to do more around Acra and across Africa like web all of us are working together so we are we are not just saying this web I want to like close it no we are making our curriculum open source because we are giving our curriculum to other project so like learn we have a curriculum that lasted for four years n quarts and believe that this is like ready enough we do solidity intro solidity we do account abstraction Diamond standard and all of this and all of this stuff so we believe that this is like ready for every Market thank you very much