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Growing The Bitcoin Development Ecosystem In Africa | Bitcoin Magazinebitcoinmagazine.com/technical/growing-bitcoin-development-in-africa
54 sats \ 13 comments \ @KenyaCoin 6 Feb 2022 bitcoin
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
My fellow Bitcoin developers and I have had the privilege of launching Qala — a developer program that would train the next generation of African Bitcoin developers. We intend to develop the technical talent locally and, at the same time, ensure there is adequate financial support during (through stipends) and after training (through employment and or grants or sponsorships) to make Bitcoin development a sustainable career path.
Qala https://qala.dev
Qala Bitcoin Newsletter Weekly, written for African developers https://qala.dev/#resources <-- Scroll to bottom for newsletter subscription form
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
We cannot afford to be outside this global transformation. We must strategically position the continent to be at the forefront of the global Bitcoin development to provide a net positive impact by harnessing the existing talent and capitalizing on all the attendant benefits of Bitcoin.
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5 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
It is, therefore, vital that we educate and bring onboard lawmakers to ensure they, too, understand the attendant benefits of allowing the proliferation and integration of the Bitcoin network into our global legacy financial system.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
There are many countries in Africa in which there are no centralized fiat exchanges.
The central banks in many countries (e.g., Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, and more) simply prohibit the domestic banking networks from serving not just bitcoin exchanges but companies and individuals engaged in transacting with, or trading in, bitcoin. And international wire transfers to and from foreign exchanges are rejected by the banks of these countries, so even though an exchange like BitSTAMP will allow users from a certain African country, there's no opportunity for a user to use their bank to move funds into (or out of) those exchanges.
Bitcoin Exchange Methods In Africa https://kenyacoin.medium.com/bitcoin-exchange-methods-in-africa-39ec3bbb859b
Of course, these restrictions impact everyone except the elite -- who can buy and sell bitcoin using their offshore accounts, without interference.
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5 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
The case for distributed access to the Bitcoin network is a significant component in this regard, especially in developing regions lacking reliable internet connectivity. As an example, Blockstream’s satellite kit and receivers are a good example, as they provide a direct communication line — without requiring reliance on existing internet providers — to access the Bitcoin network.
Individuals in communities can be guaranteed always-on-demand access to the Bitcoin network without fear of being left out due to substandard internet access in their region.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
It's incredible the number of Internet professional in Africa are using mobile data (via telecom voice/data networks) primarily for their work, except for a fortunate fraction who have traditional employment and fast Internet is provided, and those who can afford broadband connectivity (e.g., cablemodem) for their homes.
Additionally, with unreliable power (either cut during the frequent scheduled maintenance periods, or off due to unscheduled disruptions), it doesn't matter how fast and reliable internet access is. Cablemodems don't work without power. Laptops and phones don't take long to run out of sufficient power from the battery.
When that happens, there's a common saying -- This is Africa.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
Africa is home to more than a thousand indigenous languages, with non-English speaking countries.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
In practice, these developers do not view Bitcoin development as a sustainable career path (often citing an assumed lack of funding).
I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the realities and limitations of relying solely on grants to work on Bitcoin as a viable career path; the payments are infrequent, though substantial, and may not be an in-place replacement for traditional employment.
It is vital to highlight that the Bitcoin development landscape includes multiple layers of software that interact and form an entire ecosystem and is not limited to working on protocol-level projects.
We, therefore, need more projects and initiatives tailored toward the pivotal stages of a Bitcoin developer’s journey, starting with training junior developers without coding experience to a stage where they have the necessary technical foundation and coding skill level, ensuring they have a clear path toward progressing into more mid-level development.
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5 sats \ 2 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
Nowadays, stories revolve around concerns about Bitcoin’s energy consumption to the same effect.
Which is odd. Because there's so much opportunity in parts of Africa to take advantage of bitcoin's energy consumption to earn revenues.
The Great Rift Valley of East Africa has the potential for 20,000 MW of electricity generation ("volcano mining", to borrow the term used to refer to El Salvador's geothermal electric generation used for bitcoin mining). That's a "green" and "renewable" energy source -- something bitcoin miners would be ever so happy paying to develop additional geothermal steam production and electric generation capacity and to purchase the kWhs produced. By the way, that 20,000 MW potential in the Rift Valley is more than ALL bitcoin mining globally consumes today.
Ethiopia's GERD (Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam) will (eventually) be able to generate vastly more electricity than the level of demand that exists in the country (and neighboring countries as well), at least for a decade or more. That's another opportunity to take advantage of bitcoin mining as a way to offset the sunk costs from building the dam before its capacity can be used.
In West Africa, in Nigeria (and, presumably, Angola) there is an enormous amount of gas flaring (and worse, venting) from oil drilling operations. That's another area where bitcoin mining would not consume energy beyond that which is otherwise wasted (that's why it is called "waste gas", ... there's no other productive use for it, given the situation of where and why it exists).
The continent of Africa would benefit incredibly so from bitcoin mining -- just as Texas is today.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
Reading on, I see part of this was covered in the article:
It is possible to harness this flared gas that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere to power ASICs for Bitcoin mining.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 7 Feb 2022
And bitcoin would benefit incredibly so from bitcoin mining occurring in Africa:
Requiring more distributed mining pools across the world is concomitant with protecting the network and its users from economic censorship.
[not just mining pools, but mining hasharate]
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5 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin OP 6 Feb 2022
There are an even smaller number of Bitcoin developers on the African continent, with the number further shrinking as we go lower in the stack, from the Lightning Network daemon (LND) all the way down to Bitcoin Core.
This shallow number of developers working on Bitcoin development is the result of multiple factors — one of which is the widely held belief among developers that Bitcoin is devoid of innovation and is a deprecated technology (or at least soon to be).
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin OP 6 Feb 2022
The reason that is the general consensys [SIC] (and pun intended), is because of the amount of propaganda by the state (and state co-opted media), along with the competitor bashing from the slew of shitcoins, many of which attempted to gain a foothold in various cities and regioins.
Blockchain, not bitcoin, was the mantra on the continent for well over half a decade!
Celo (affiliated with Stellar) spends a ton of money in Africa. Cardano / Charles Hoskinson, ... is all over the continent. Previously, blockchains like Algorand had been very active. Binance is the latest to be paying handsomely to expand their footprint (for not just their exchange, but for development for DeFi and DApps that use their BSC blockchain) in many African nations.
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