Cardano in Africa: Inside IOHK’s Ethiopia Blockchain Deal. Ethiopian schools will use the Cardano blockchain to track student performance, the government said. Ethiopia might be not the first place you think of as a hotspot for blockchain technology.
A predominantly rural country where only 15% of the population has access to the internet, Ethiopia is going through severe civil unrest in the north. Ethnic strife in the Tigray region recently led to thousands killed and millions fleeing the country as refugees to neighboring Sudan. The country is also experiencing local internet shutdowns.
Ethiopia is thus a good example of the gap between the ambitious goals of modern technology and the actual circumstances on the ground.
IOHK, the company behind the cardano (ADA, +1.47%) (ADA) cryptocurrency, believes it can help bridge this gap. This week, IOHK announced it has partnered with the Ethiopian government to create a blockchain-based system to track student performance in local schools.
“It’s a hard country, so if we make it there we can make it anywhere,” said John O’Connor, IOHK’s director of African Operations.
‘A dream come true’
Local challenges do not appear to be deterring IOHK from its mission. “Life has to go on for the rest of the country,” said O’Connor.
IOHK is establishing a physical presence in the country, opening an office in the capital, Addis Ababa, and starting work on the large-scale blockchain ID project, which is expected to go live in January 2022, O’Connor told CoinDesk. At the moment, the core identity product, named PRISM, is ready, and other features, including classroom management, will come later.
In a video stream IOHK made on April 29, Ethiopia’s Minister of Education, Getahun Mekuria, spoke of the partnership, saying the “initiative is about bringing technology to improve the quality of education” in Ethiopia. Cardano is one of the top cryptocurrencies, the minister said, which is why “doing blockchain with IOHK is like a dream coming true” for him.
According to the minister, 5 million students will receive Cardano blockchain-based IDs, which will allow the authorities to track every student’s academic performance. Also, 750,000 teachers will get access to the system. According to the minister, the Ethiopian government struck a deal with an undisclosed Chinese manufacturer to provide enough tablets for the project to happen.
O’Connor said the ministry, which enjoys financial support from large donors in the West including USAID, will fund the purchase of the tablets, and also build lacking infrastructure so that 3,500 Ethiopian schools have access to the internet and can use the new system.
CoinDesk asked Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education to confirm these infrastructure plans but received no response by press time. It’s not clear how much the project will cost the government.