Africa, Other Regions Could Contribute To Arweave’s Second Billion Transactions, If Groomed By The Ecosystem
There are efforts to build grassroot communities for Arweave Protocol across the world, a move that could create awareness for the benefits of decentralised and immutable data storage and groom new builders and end users who could contribute to the Protocol’s second billion transactions target.
The community building drive led by Only Arweave is aimed at encouraging in-person connection of builders and lovers of Arweave in countries all over the world. With support grants, meetings have been held in the United Kingdom, Indian, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by Arweave enthusiasts and builders who live in these countries, enabling them to easily connect and build a community.
It (Arweave meet up grants) is in the early stages and thus far we’ve learned there is a big appetite for Arweave in communities that are not main areas for large events, Only Arweave told Permaweb News.
Even though some of the regions are not main areas for large events, they are fertile grounds for Arweave’s technology to grow. One of them is Africa.
A continent of 52 countries with an estimated combined population of 1.4 billion people, Africa has major tech hubs in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt. In 2022, the continent’s digital economy was estimated to be $115 billion and projected to hit $712 billion by 2025. Data centre market by investment is expected to reach $5 billion by 2026, according to estimates by the Africa Data Centres Association.
Blockchain Dev Fest (Photo credit: Merdi Kim)
Most of the activities in Africa’s tech scene are anchored on data storage facilities provided by centralised firms. However, using centralised data storage has downsides including single point of failure, high cost and arbitrary change in user rights and policies. In the continent, many individuals, small and medium sized companies and government organisations who do not have big budgets, may be forced to stick with the old way of paper, files, and cabinets to store data, increasing the risk of manipulation and data loss to fire and water.
Indeed, more dangerous to the African public, in addition to the global problem of web links breaking, is the growing risk of censorship by autocratic governments. Media firms' websites have been targeted, activists' and political opponents' homes have been raided with documents confiscated by tyrannical governments. There are long running conflicts in many parts of Africa where evidence which could help in prosecuting culprits in the future or help to document history could be lost forever if not properly stored.
Merdi Kim, a software engineer and coordinator of Arweave Africa who organised meetings in English-speaking Uganda and French-speaking DRC where participants were introduced to Arweave and shown how to build on the protocol, believes Arweave’s technology can be applied to solve many challenges in the continent and developers who will be relied upon to build tech solutions could play key roles in helping Arweave reach Africa.
Uganda and any other African country have a lot to gain from leveraging Arweave… Now more than ever we have a chance to save African history forever. And why not write it (on the permaweb). We have not even scratched what ‘s possible in terms of ideas, Kim told Permaweb News.
Arweave Meet Up Uganda (Photo credit: Merdi Kim)
Software developer, Aggrey Kanyoro, who attended the meeting in Uganda, told Permaweb News that the event left him excited about his future with Arweave and inspired him to find more information about how to build apps and store data on Arweave.
For participants in the DRC like Doddy Matabaro who is a full stack developer, Arweave’s one-time payment for 200 years storage on decentralised infrastructure is the most impressive.
To make Arweave popular in Central Africa and the Congo in particular, we need to have several concrete projects that take real African life into account in order to win people’s trust. We also need to multiply meetings, meetups, events, communications and campaigns to popularise Arweave, Matabaro told Permaweb News.
Arweave Meet Up Goma, DRC (Photo credit: Merdi Kim)
Full stack developer Shako Benjamin who attended the event in the DRC said the DRC as well as Africa could catch up with the rest of the world in tech if information on technology and opportunities are provided to builders. He noted that the ecosystem needed to build apps that would make Arweave a necessity for those seeking tech products.
Penetrating countries in Africa, Asia and South America could make Arweave’s hitting the second billion mark shorter than it reached the first. More Arweave events are coming up in Nigerian and Kenya. Creating Arweave communities developing countries may be the easy part, their survival requires support from the ecosystem.
We are moving towards a promising and big Arweave community. Uganda and any other African country have a lot to gain from leveraging Arweave, Kim also said.
