The Story Of A Ugandan Prince And A Crypto Startup Planning For An African Revolution – Part 1

In This Case, Blockchain Has Turned Out To Be Just What Emerging Economies Were Following?

It is in this case, as it has been railing for years as against the centralized world of banks are the crypto and blockchain enthusiasts where many have been doing so from the privileged vantage point of developed countries. In this context what is blockchain technology turning out to be most revolutionary in the emerging economies?

Therefore, as it is viewed for instance, in Africa, the consumers of the countries became frustrated as the banking fees imposed on the transactions every time, they wanted to merely top up their mobile airtime that is minutes alone becoming a form of money. It has been developed for the developed world as the banking simply is not working a transaction to top up the phone costing more than the airtime. 

Wala the South African start-up had realised this early on having developed an app for smartphones acting like the wallet facilitating customer transactions via the app with the existing banking infrastructures. Hurting Wala’s customer base was the high banking fees for nearly every function as the company’s early business model was a mobile wallet for the smartphone generation. 

Hence they were in the need for a zero-fee solution as the existing financial system just didn’t work and that is how they realised a switch to cryptocurrency could allow payments across a peer-to-peer network for merchants offering airtime, data, electricity bills and also the ability to pay the school fees. 

Emerging Countries Are Benefitting From The Blockchain

Thereafter the progress of Wala witnessed raising $ 1.2 million selling Ethereum based $DALA tokens in an ICO last year facilitating thousands of transactions in the daily accounts across Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as most of those are micropayments under $1. 

There have been more than 100,000 $DALA wallets opened since the launch of their $DALA currency and more than 2.5 million $DALA transactions being processed according to the company. For right now the multi-chain crypto asset uses Ether for the wallet and Stellar for transactions as though it was not locked to any one platform. 

Consumers have access to borderless, low cost, efficient, and unique financial services through $DALA protocols Kopa, Soko, and Kazi enabling them to earn, save, borrow and transact in the new, decentralised financial system. Whereas Wala doesn’t plan to stop there. 

Announcing it has partnered with a gigawatt-scale solar program, Dala for Uganda creates a blockchain-enabled clean energy economy. 

The Procedure Of How It’s Going To Work:

Partnering on the project with the Ugandan government and the Ugandan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development is the long-time energy company known as CleanPath Emerging Markets Uganda meaning Ugandans can buy solar energy from this massive new infrastructure project thereby using $DALA. 

Thereby the gradual progress is seen as CPEM uses the DALA blockchain platform to manage the ledger, it’s vendor contracts along with the partner commitments with the company having more than 11,000 MWs of the renewable energy experience already under its belt. 

Aiming to create a new clean energy economy in Uganda the $ 1.5 billion program not only creates employment and kick-starting a clean energy economy whereas the new economic development is seen in Uganda with Ugandan consumers being able to buy the solar power in $ DALA with workers paid in $DALA as the program will then run on $DALA. 

According to Wala co-founder and CEO Tricia Martinez, the numbers they have seen since the launch of $DALA is staggering and the large portion of the current users come to be Ugandan as the partnership is a natural next step allowing users the opportunity to further benefit from using $DALA showing that Ugandans are ready to use crypto assets in their day-to-day transactions is the high level of user traffic. 

How Does The Presence Of A Prince Influence It?

The story hereafter isn’t coming about without an enlightened African prince who might have stepped straight out of the mythical kingdom of Wakanda where he is featured as in the recent smash hit movie Black Panther. 

Here comes the best actor in the use case the founder of CPEM Prince Kudra Kalema of the Bugandan Kingdom with his ancestry going back to at least the 14th century as Buganda is now the kingdom monarchy with a large degree of autonomy from the Ugandan state. 

According to Prince Kudra Kalema, they are truly excited about the blockchain program with partnership in DALA providing Ugandans an opportunity to access clean energy through $DALA fostering a more inclusive and decentralised financial system that is not possible with legacy technologies. He further states that his family considers itself to be the custodian of the land and have been searching for about a decade to find solutions for improving the country. What if then could they work on the people not even switching their lights on?

The Discussion Does Not End Here 

The biggest issue apart from blockchain obvious to him was affordable electricity and to do it in a renewable way be it solar as microgrids turned out to be the solution and it had to be at scale.