 Whatever you prefer to call it, crypto, blockchain or Web 3, this new segment of the digital economy is booming across Africa. If you've been sleeping on the sector, now's a good time to wake up. According to analytics firm, chain analysis, Africa's crypto market increased in value by more than 1,200% between July 2020 and June 2021, led by especially high adoption rate in Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Tanzania. Africa had the third fastest growing cryptocurrency economy worldwide during that period. While the potential impact of corporate partnerships, NGOs, venture capitalists and blockchain protocols are not to be downplayed, the government remains an important actor that can stimulate or impede the emergence of Africa's Web 3 economy. Welcome to business insight and plus TV Africa, I am Justin Akadone. Before we get into the conversation of the day, here are some useful tips on how to revive a dying business. Five ways to revive a dying business. Is your business showing signs of distress or is it straight up thanking? There are simple measures you can take to bring it back from the break. Your business might be dying, but it doesn't have to mean it's over. Here are five things you can do to save your dying business and also help it thrive. One, evaluate your situation honestly. Before facetians treat a patient, they do all kinds of tests and make a diagnosis. So when you realize that your business is in serious trouble, stop. You need to take a good head look at your company to evaluate and access what's going wrong. You can't take action without knowing where to start. Second, rethink your strategy. The way you think about your failure is key to your success. After reevaluating your company, chances are you have found where you went wrong and you're ready to redefine and rethink your strategy. You have decided not to give up and you are determined to succeed. This is a great step in reviving a dying business, but it's also a hard one. Three, focus on your people. You may think that the problem is in your software, hardware or your data, but the best business are the ones that run with soul. Your most important asset are your people, your employees. When your company seems to be falling, reevaluate not just your strategy, but those who need to execute it, if necessary, get rid of those who are slowing you down and hire those who will help you revive your dying business. Four, let go of pride and fear. Rather than playing the blame game, which will get you nowhere, successful CEOs and business leaders know that admitting their faults and showing genuine humility will help rebuild and rebuke the organization. When business leaders are willing to change or stick to preconceived ideas of what they think will work, it is a recipe for disaster. And five, don't lose your passion. Now, passion is what made you start your business in the first place and it will help you to keep going. Passion may not always come with the voice of reason, but it may be the feel you need to reignite that fire. So you see, your business can actually thrive. All right, moving on, government across the continent seem to generally view cryptocurrencies with a healthy dose of skepticism. However, across the world, the new Web3 economy is giving best the myriads of opportunities and the implications for the African continent are massive. We have Rumair Dominic, certified Metivus expert joining us. Thanks for joining us on the show, Rumair. Thank you very much for having me, Jay. It is indeed our pleasure. Let's just get straight to the business of the day. How would you describe the Web3 and what excites you about it? All right, thank you very much, Jay. So talking about web theory, the one we need to actually differentiate it from all others is permissionless. And how do I mean by permissionless? So you can imagine all your content on the internet gets deleted or have you ever been in a country before and you try to assess some banking services and you could not get across to those particular banking services because you're part of the less privileged. But then there were some setting rules that actually ensured that you could not get into that place. It brings us back to the word permissionless. And you see, you can say, I said imagine if all your content gets deleted, you can say, yes, that can happen. Are you even doubt if it can happen? Okay, just imagine Donald Trump's Twitter saga. Then just also imagine that people getting their YouTube videos banned from YouTube, from Facebook and all of those things. So permissionless is actually the first word we need to think when we talk of web theory. Because web theory is the next evolution of the internet. And it is the internet of value. So when one was static and unresponsive, and you can imagine the internet as of 2000, you could only scroll. But the web 2.0 is the internet that you are used to right now, where you can like, you can comment, you can share things on the internet. But web theory, which is the next evolution of the internet? There are two key foundational things that are applicable to web theory. And that is number one, digital ownership and number two, interoperability. How do I mean by digital ownership and interoperability? So for the first time, there's actually their ability to truly own something on the internet. Digital ownership in the sense that just like you have a bar of gold underneath your pillow, or you have your international passport underneath your pillow as you are sleeping, right? But now the digital format of it, you truly have that particular type of ownership of your assets underneath your pillow. Some people might say, okay, what are the second things that enables interoperability? Interoperability is the ability for you to be able to move across one platform to another platform without permission. Okay, let's say for example, you have some content on Facebook, you have some content on YouTube, you have some content on Twitter. Now, if you have some following on Facebook, you cannot just carry those numbers that you have on Facebook and just go and use them to start on Twitter, or you just use them to start on Instagram. You need to start growing a new audience on these other different platforms. The ability for you to be able to move seamlessly from one platform to the other and be able to take all of your value, all of your assets is what we refer to as what interoperability and web theory actually enables what this particular interoperability. Because when you look at things like digital ownership, you might say, okay, maybe it's things like money that you want to own. But it actually transcends beyond owning just things like money. What if you want to own things like your certificates digitally, or you want to own your real estate digitally, web theory actually enables all of this and it has actually created a powerful new incentive mechanism for its users. Sounds very interesting. And that web theory is a community-led platform. So currently, web theory is actually enabling a lot of digital applications around Africa. What is the role that blockchain technology play in Web3? Oh, interesting. You see, that is actually one question that a lot of people confuse. Blockchain actually is an enabler of web theory. So for web theory to actually function, there are a couple of things that web theory needs, or there are some tools that web theory needs to enable its functions. Now, one of those tools that enables web theory to be able to run is token. And token can only be done on the blockchain because you need blockchains to be able to host those tokens. So the role of blockchain in web theory is in fact that it enables web theory. It ensures that web theory is able to run on decentralized platforms because blockchain is decentralized, right? And then blockchain is also able to give it transparency. Blockchain is able to give it some properties of immutability. And blockchain is also able to give it the permissionless protocol that we just said. So because of blockchain, web theory would not be possible if you do not have blockchain because blockchain is actually the key catalyst that is what's permissionless technology. So because of that particular permissionless technology, which is the blockchain, it enables web theory to try on that particular technology. Is there a difference or similarity between crypto and web 3? Yeah, it's actually foundational. Okay, let's look at it like this. Crypto is part of web theory. So when you say similarities and differences, it is part of the ecosystem. Without crypto, a lot of web theory protocols and web theory activities will not be functioning. So let's put it like this. For web theory, what are the things that are actually done with crypto in web theory? You use them to be able to raise capital. You want to have access to funding, maybe a new company on the internet and you come from a third world country and you cannot do that. Then you can be able to do what? Have access to funding that particular business idea. And how do you fund that particular business idea? In a 2022 world, you can do that using what? Cryptocurrencies. And that means that cryptocurrencies will not enable that particular concept of web theory to work to try. So it is actually intertwined, the similarities with the cryptocurrency and web theory. It is a whole ecosystem that one cannot do, that cannot do without each other. Now, cryptocurrency, you have the token side of it and you also have the non-fungible token side of it. And because web theory actually enables you to move from one particular platform to another particular platform, which is an interoperability that we just made mention of, blockchain and crypto becomes the key enabler, the key enabler for what? For web theory. So developing these skill sets in blockchain to be able to understand that particular blockchain technology first would give you a head start into what blockchain, into what web theory technologies. There is this belief that the whole essence of web theory is an effort to get everyone into cryptocurrency. How true is this? It's actually not true. The question of web theory is, it's not a function of if, it's a function of when. Just like this particular communication, before the pandemic, there's a possibility that maybe I might be in your studio right now and this is might be in your studio and having this particular interview, right? But since the particular pandemic, we've seen post-COVID practices evolve into us having this kind of interviews and it has become what? The normal. It is not actually a scheme to bring people into crypto. It is actually an evolution into the future that cannot be stopped because technology must keep evolving and the reason why players of the first world countries right now that are currently doing well with web theory technologies are doing so well is because the government of these countries actually supported policies and incentives that would ensure that these companies that are innovative towards web theory solutions, the tribe, not thinking that it is a scheme to be able to bring people into what's cryptocurrency. Let's say for example, a country like Kenya, when the mobile money M-Pesa came in, they allowed free revolution for it and that particular freedom of hands that the government gives to them ensured that mobile money payment is not very predominant in what in Kenya. When you look at an African population where you have about 70% of its population as used and then you have it raising a GDP capital of about $2.5 trillion. You can see that it is a technology that can actually scale up what we produce in the sense that connect the NFT dots now with the web theory and say African artists right now, they will be able to engage with more markets. Now you want to assess global markets because of web theory. You can assess liquid markets instantaneously without any intermediaries and then you can be able to get your ideas launched in a matter of seconds because of the web theory technology. So you can see that it is far different from just trying to incentivize people to come into cryptocurrency. It is very, very, very different from that particular conclusion. All right. Rume, so just how can Nigeria, indeed Africa, benefit from web theory? What are the opportunities really and what gaps are there to be closed in all of this? Okay. One way Nigeria can actually benefit from these opportunities is massive because it is actually able to create a lot of new jobs for the youth. Now, look at this, right? We have a great population and this is a new industry. This particular industry is also well funded. One of the major opportunities is that Nigeria or Africa as a region can create the next set of technological technocrats that would be able to power this particular type of revolution just like what we do at VRM.co. If you go online, you see that we try to bridge the knowledge gap and the skill set gap between the traditional individuals that do not know about this technology and we that know about this technology. Bringing that synergy together, we educate, we bridge that particular skill set. So we've turned ourselves into a production house. So you are looking for people that have web theory skills for today in terms of NFT, the virtual reality, augmented reality, programming, Node.js to be able to do all of those things. We have those kind of people at our beck and call that we have produced. So you can see that we are bridging the gap and now you can see that when these people that we have produced, they are working. They end in dollars, which means they end in foreign currency, which means they are adding to the GDP of the world of the country. At a point in time, the Nigerian CBN government said that if you can bring dollar into this country, they will be giving you 55,000 or more. I think the amount of dollar that is applicable for it. You can see that this particular type of incentive that are a cake is not needed. If you have a production team of web theory engineers in Africa, in Nigeria, and we are servicing the world just the same way Angela did for Facebook, they are giving raw talents to the world. Nigerian governments were ensuring that we are investing into web theory just like private individuals like us now are doing for the web theory and developing these skills. I mean, come, think of it in the next two, three years from now and you will see a booming economy where we can now call Africa a Silicon Valley or call Nigeria a Silicon Valley place. Very, very interesting, Dominic. But let me just take it one step further. Web theory and all of it, some opportunities and benefits. Can we talk about cyber security? Just how can web theory help? Interesting. Cyber security and web theory, they are very, very, very related. You see, because you are dealing with digital assets and you are dealing with digital space, you cannot under look that particular part of the cyber security. You see, there are a lot of scammers, there are a lot of bad actors on the internet. It is extremely important for you to be able to protect your digital identity online. You know, with the emergence of web theory, we have things like the metaverse, we have things like NFTs, we have cryptocurrencies, we have digital wallets. And all of this, they work in synergy to ensure that the web theory technology is what is very, very good and interactive. Now, you must ensure that you take steps to be able to protect yourself against bad actors and cyber actors online. You must ensure that you keep your private keys because your first interaction with most web theory applications will be your cryptocurrency wallets. And your cryptocurrency wallets, you must ensure you keep your private keys in a good place. You must ensure that you interact only with protocols, just because cyber security exploit us, right? That's the hackers online. They will be in some fraudulent protocol or in some malicious protocol for the smart contracts that will now say, okay, they exploit your wallet and then they are able to hack into your wallet. Remember that web theory is a function of blockchain technology and smart contracts working in synergy together. So you must ensure that you have a very good secure online security check, online security protocols while you're interacting with web theory and as we move to a future of web theory and the possibilities that are available with it. All right. We must say a very big thank you to you, Rume Dominic, for all the useful insights that you have shared. Indeed, a whole lot of Nigerians and of course, Africans have wanted to, you know, things they have taken away from all of this. I indeed have been enlightened and educated. Rume Dominic is a certified metaversum expert and he joined us to look at web theory, the new wave for Africa's digital economy. We appreciate your time, Rume. All right. That's the size of the show for this week. I am Justin Kadunil. Let's do it again next time. Bye for now.