Hi NEAR community,
My name is Kevin Imani (Mazi) and I lead the new Sankore 2.0 (S2) initiative. We’ve set up a home for NEAR ecosystem projects in Nairobi – for Kenya and for Africa as a whole. S2 promotes the development of Web3 products running on NEAR through:
- Education
- Startup Promotion
- Making Policy and Regulation Recommendations for Government
- Supplying Technical Expertise to Enterprises
- Developer Recruitment
- Prototyping
- Regional Community Development
- Cross-Community/Guild Collaboration
- Events
- University Outreach
S2’s continental headquarters in Nairobi shares a co-working office space with existing crypto hubs and start-ups such as iHub, Whive Protocol, and Konza Technopolis leaders and our partner Melanin Academy that aims to train 2,000 blockchain engineers to build solutions for Africa. S2 joins Nairobi’s technology businesses in the area nicknamed “Silicon Savannah,” with its crypto hubs, talent pool developers, financiers and eager policymakers. This environment gives S2 a full spectrum to implement a NEAR city node for Africa.
The purpose of S2 is to integrate the NEAR blockchain with projects and solutions conceived and built by local developers in Kenya. In the midst of this process, S2 will continue to actively recruit, market, create, and share information about the emergence of the crypto economy in Kenya, and the larger continent of Africa.
Activities
We will do this through our three initial activities for the NEAR ecosystem:
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Producing Web3 content in Africa that covers use cases, regulation & policy, and opportunities & potential.
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Collaborating with local developers, universities and crypto hubs such as the Melanin Academy, iHub and konza technopolis leaders to incentivise students and professionals to build solutions that utilise NEAR.
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Making crypto-friendly policy suggestions to policymakers that advance the needs of everyday people and businesses while coordinating with academics and community leaders.
Goals/ Action Items
- Weekly web3 content production (including the research and the publication on crypto related articles and videos) on our medium blog.
- Topics: use cases, regulation & policy, and opportunities & potential
The next three tasks represent medium/long terms goals, starting by September 2021:
- We plan to build a network with local crypto hubs in Nairobi and community leaders to incentivise building solutions that utilise NEAR.
- We plan to create university ambassadors for S2 to help identify talented entrepreneurs and developers eager to join the NEAR ecosystem.
- We plan to create a network with policymakers in Nairobi to encourage policy frameworks that incentivise crypto-friendly businesses in Kenya (in particular with The Distributed ledgers Technology (DTL) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Taskforce). S2 has the capacity to operate as the primary development arm of the NEAR ecosystem in Africa.
- We intend to do this through one of our partners who contributed to the 123 - page report made by DTL & AI to the ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru with 12 recommendations to how blockchain and AI can be utilized in public services.
S2 Blog Content Roadmap:
These are the following articles/ content pieces in the pipeline:
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Introducing Sankore 2.0 (S2). Which is already out. Click here to read
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Cryptocurrency in Africa: The Continent’s Importance in Widespread Adoption. Click here to read
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Why Nairobi Plans to Become The Next Crypto Frontier in Africa: Uses Cases and The Kenyan Government
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Konza Technopolis: Kenya’s Smart City for Digital Currencies?
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Etc.
Guild Roadmap
Step 1: Setting up S2 as a home for NEAR ecosystem projects in Nairobi for Kenya and for the continent of Africa: September 2021.
Step 2: Connecting the NEAR Academy with BitHub.Africa to design an engineering ecosystem with both the NEAR Protocol and Whive Protocol: October 2021
Step 3: Collaborating with local universities and crypto companies to incentivise to join the NEAR ecosystem: November 2021
Contact
We’re still in the process of gathering members, if you’re interested in joining the community, let us know.
Our website: sankore2.com
Our Guild Application form: bit.ly/2TXGb2A
Our telegram: S2
My email: kevin@sankore2.com
