 Blockchain is about empowerment of the people. It goes to the grassroots society to make sure and guarantee the benefits to the producers, to the community. IOHK is in Ethiopia now to train class of 22 young Ethiopian women and 4 Ugandan women and the idea is to train them in Haskell and if they succeed to employ them. There's a problem with believing in Africans as developers. People would rather outsource their technologies than trust in us who have done four or three year courses to develop for them their software so that's a really really big challenge embracing technology and also believing in ourselves to develop softwares. Being able to build these transparent and decentralized systems is a big privilege and a great opportunity for me and when I heard about it I heard that experts that are working in the field are coming to teach us so it's something that we've never had before so it's pretty exciting. The blockchain community as a whole agrees that Africa is an incredibly exciting region because there aren't legacy systems in place because this technology is cheap and that's obviously attractive to the continent but which problems to solve and what appropriate solutions are is often much harder and it's a lot harder to do if you're asking these questions or coming up with these ideas from London, New York or San Francisco. I think it's very important to actually go somewhere to really experience it. I mean of course you hear about the challenges in developing countries like Ethiopia but to actually experience it first hand is a completely different story the traffic, the internet, the infrastructure and so on. So by doing this training course here and training this group of developers we're going to have people who understand the technology understand how to build solutions on it but crucially also understand what problems we should be building solutions for. The use are open to new ideas and new development. Creativity comes mostly when there is a problem. A very good example on the African level would be coffee farming. There's a lot of participants involved in this sector. There's the producers, the manufacturers, the processors, the suppliers. So the fact that you can keep track of your coffee from point A to point B to point C you could keep track of everything that's happening to the produce. The most important thing is identity to the products. And when we have a record of our activities and how our production is going through which levels it goes and who are the consumers and what is the price over there and who is really benefiting. And coffee farming is just one example out of all the many that we could apply blockchain technology to and this could impact people's lives. I'm personally interested in the health sector because I have friends that are working as doctors and nurses and the like and usually when referrals are made to governmental hospitals they don't have full records, full medical history of the patients. Things like this I feel can be tackled by blockchain technology. To my country Uganda recently there is a big problem of land rangers. People keep on buying land more than once. So if at all we put this system into blockchain and everything becomes digital I don't think our country will have the same problem again. For me incorporating blockchain into all these sectors would be a really big deal. The fact that we wouldn't have one elected party controlling the system but a whole lot of transparency for all of us to see what's going on. I love being here and hearing all about how blockchain would affect various aspects of the economy in this country and perhaps throughout Africa. So it's really cool to be part of the conversation and be part of making it possible. These are all really interesting projects for which there's huge demand across both government and private sector. So when it comes to IOHK deciding what technology we're going to be building baking into Cardano and other products this information is definitely being fed back. We're looking to build solutions for these problems all this year. I mean I am the teacher and I'm here to teach the students but actually it's also the other way around that I by being here learn a lot and a whole new appreciation for how important our work actually is and what blockchain can possibly do for these countries and these people. Yeah what I think the role of IOHK is there like with a Haskell training that is happening right now is to really bring or add to the curriculum that developers get in the universities like in this line of education because universities are not that fast in adopting new technologies even though of course there is some research happening there are new things also being developed at universities but they're often disconnected from the private sector so this kind of I would even describe it as a collaboration between public sector and IOHK because yeah you just create more value for the educational system on the one side and you create value for IOHK so you can reach out to a large community that's at the end of the day what you need you need people here on the ground who are working on this topic who are working with this technology and therefore it's a great job. Emerging technologies are attractive to young upcoming youth I read a statistic somewhere that 70% of the world's youth in 2050 will be in Africa and a significant portion of the young so this is an opportunity to target those and there will be a lot of opportunities around that what's lacking is not the technology what's lacking is the know-how but I think if we can solve that there could be massive amounts of leapfrogging this is not about ketchup this is about leapfrogging so maybe the next best thing in the world will come out of Africa. I'm really impressed by the student's attitude the eagerness to learn and so on but it's more than that I mean it's really humbling how how much they sacrifice to be in this course I mean there are students who left their children behind with their family for two months just to be able to attend this course others quit their jobs or basically put their university degree on hold just to be able to attend so this really puts a lot of pressure also on us as instructors in a good way I mean because it really shows how important this is and this is not just some exercise so it's incredibly exciting for me to see the progress which this course really represents when I moved over here first in maybe February or March of last year you know we had a lot of ideas I was having lots of conversations with Charles about what we can do and to see this incredibly ambitious plan now for 2019 with huge rich house cross dozens and dozens of countries real education programs working both through iowich k-led courses and also accreditation with universities and the capacities actually build solutions through the teams that we're building out and hiring here I think it's going to be a great year and I'm looking forward to seeing seeing with the Holt. I'm really extremely happy to be here because I love teaching and I love education I love high school I love mathematics so it's already great working for iowich k-led I can do all these things but combining that with with the chance to actually help people improve their lives and really make a difference that is I can't think of any better thing to do I've loved mathematics and programming almost my whole life and I love working with mathematics I love working with computers and I love teaching but all of that is somehow dwarfed by what I feel now being in in Ethiopia here and and actually having the chance to to really have an impact on on so many people's lives so this is like a great conclusion I mean I feel I'm almost as if all my training all my university years everything built up to this point where finally I'm in a situation to to give this class and and share my knowledge with people that really can use it to to change the world for the better for me I want to see a world that's controlled by technology not only Africa but the world