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title: Ethereum Foundation - Africa opportunity

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# Ethereum Foundation - Africa opportunity

Purpose: Increase Ethereum footprint in Africa and grow an ecosystem aligned with the core values of the Ethereum vision.

> If Ethereum is a digital nation, millions of Africans would flock in masses to become citizens. Such citizenship wouldn't be a luxury addition or a political statement, but a gateway to a fairer borderless economy and ultimately self-determination.

## Why Africa and why now:
* Africa is made of frontier economies that are some of the fastest growing. The historical lack of sophisicated institutions (political, economic, social) is an advantage for leapfrogging a generation of Web2/centralized infrastructure building, and jump straight into the future. Also means fewer legacy institutions to compete with.
* Growing African economies fueled by talent and innovation is a no-brainer approach. Web3 offers faster emancipation from highly extractive economies (which are remnants of very recent colonial times).
* Africa has huge untapped talent that could find a home in the Ethereum ecosystem. It's a win-win-win scenario for talent, the countries, and the Ethereum ecosystem. For context, 900 million people under the age of 30 (over 70% of the whole continent), it's and the fastest growing population in the world (expected to be over 2.5 billion people by 2050). Key drivers for tech adoption are growing, e.g. access to the internet, accelerating urbanization, technology native institutions (e.g. internet banking), growing startup ecosystems, etc.
* Africa offers strategic long-term value for Ethereum. Ethereum needs builders and users to live up to its vision. Africa offers Ethereum a massive (and growing) pool of users for new protocols, and over time a lage pools of talent.
* Unproven Layer 1 networks are penetrating African ecosystems very rapidly, and promising solutions that are unlikely to succeed or carry huge risks that the local ecosystem can't afford. They are succeeding in claiming territory and expanding quickly, not because they are viable networks that offer long-term value, but because no one else is there. It is *imperative* for the Ethereum Foundation and the ecosystem broadly to proactively prioritize Africa, to avoid large communities/countries losing confidence in Web3 and setting us back years in leveraging the talent and user base that can be strategically important for the growth of the blockchain industry.


## Why haven't we grown in Africa yet?
* Africa can be a challenging space to navigate, especially for Western-centric teams/protocols. High levels of corruption, political instabilities in some countries, bad press, inconsistent internet access, "informal economy", cultural and language differences (esp for non-English speaking countries), and Africa is not "on the way" to any of the current crypto hubs. 
* The Web3 community (and the world in general) continues to see Africans as a charity case, as opposed to seeing the untapped potential. Most existing efforts are CSR driven (except perhaps for YC and a small number of investors becoming more active), and my observation is there is too much "feel-good" initiatives that take a top-down approach whenever they talk about Africa.
* Cost of building and transacting on Ethereum is just too high currently. Gas fees make Ethereum very inaccessible for African users. The upcoming merge and Rollups can address this.
* The Ethereum Foundation has noted there isn't an African in the team to provide that lens and vet ideas/opportunities. This can make it hard to move fast, be proactive, make high-leverage calls, and take real risks.

My observation on the current crypto adoption from African users falls in the following categories (and these assumptions need to be tested):
1. Unsophisticated retail speculators. They are prone to fall for shitcoins, scams, ponzis, and lose capital. Mostly due to lack of knowledge/understanding of the Web3 ecosystem as a whole, and lack of exposure. This category includes a small number amateur traders, who are a bit more sophisitcated than retail speculators, but lack the overview of the whole ecosystem.
2. Creatives (music/art/photography/mixed-media) who are jumping on the NFT bandwagon. A few successful projects coming out doing uniquely African projects, and a lot more starting on this journey. There doens't seem to be large African collectors, so the path is steep for global exposure. Huge opportunity here though as African culture has spread all over the world, and NFTs offer a way to bring value back to creators.
3. A small number of Web3 builders who are creating applications that meet real needs (e.g. finance, identity, education). They are plugged into the global communities, and successful ones have access to global investors.




## High leverage opportunities for EF and the Ethereum ecosystem

1. **Education and talent development** - Training highly motivated African talent is one of the lowest hanging fruits for high leverage value creation for Africa and for the Ethereum Ecosystem. 
    * Train developers, community builders, and other skills that are needed for the Ethereum ecosystem to grow
    * Values foundation, how to DAO, work effectively in decentralized protocols
    * Immediate economic impact through crypto native work compensation (including project tokens), and diverge some energy from speculative gambling
        * A huge step up from Web2 remote work with middle-players taking huge cuts (current experienced dev pay ranges $700-2.5k/month full-time in Web2)
        * There are roughly 600,000 developers in Africa (as of 2020), and only 1/3 are formally educated through university. The rest are self-taught, bootcamps, and on the job training. High uptake of open source development. 

3. **More Web3 protocols that build core economic infrastructures for Africa** - Most protocols that get built in Africa are more likely to be filling infrastructure gaps for users. Constantly watering the soil will nuture trees that will build/sustain a rich eocosystem, even when we see more weeds at the beginning.


5. **Africa-focused public goods funding rounds** - Developing pipelines of public good initiatives (increasing the number of quality submissions) and vetting mechanisms that are context specific.
     * Potential collaborations with Gitcoin
     * Bringing awareness and promotion to attract high quality submissions
     * Developing a culture (and incentives?) of public goods funding for African Web3 startups

5. **Research on DAO structures for Africa** - What DAO designs are most applicable for the cultural and economic contexts of African countries? Finding the types of DAO designs that can be successful will be transformational and offer a huge step up in human and resource coordination across the continent.

5. **Ecosystem nurturing** - supporting community building initiatives, future ETH community events (Devcon in Africa??) will be an accelerator for everything Ethereum in Africa. A low hanging fruit is identifying and then nurturing dedicated community builders on the ground (mostly unrewarded work). 

7. **Policy research and partnerships** - forming partnerships with government leaders to undertake policy research (e.g. co-funding research) can be a high-leverage way to influence and make Web3 less threatening. 


