The Africa Blockchain
Institute (ABI) will open Rwanda’s ostensibly first blockchain school in 2020,
offering five new courses for local developers, professionals and policymakers.
In an interview with Cointelegraph on Dec. 26, ABI
Executive Director, Kayode Babarinde, revealed that the new school has five key
courses in the pipeline: a blockchain essentials certification course, a
blockchain developers’ course, an enterprise blockchain course, blockchain for
lawyers and blockchain for impact.
Groundwork laid in Ghana
Babarinde told Cointelegraph that the ABI laid the
foundation for its work in Rwanda by running a pilot phase for the school in
Ghana, where it launched the inaugural class for a blockchain essentials
certification course.
While the five course areas had already been broadly
sketched out ahead of the pilot in Ghana, the school’s curriculum has now been
rehauled and updated on the basis of the responses and experiences of course
participants.
Babarinde said that the support and cooperation of the
Blockchain DLT Rwanda Association, and its chairman, Norbert Haguma, has been a
key factor in its decision to launch the school in the country.
More broadly, he characterized the local context as being
highly conducive for investments in new technologies:
“Every technology company is looking for an enabling
environment to serve the continent. This means supportive policies, resource
management, and visibility for the market. All these make Rwanda stand out in
Africa.”
While noting the need to foster the development of
blockchain implementations locally, Babarinde said this should not imply an
aversion to cooperating with overseas initiatives in the sector.
As an emerging technology with a still growing community,
international collaboration and partnerships remain key to sustaining the
adoption of blockchain across the continent, he said.
Regulatory cooperation
Alongside education, part of the ABI’s core activities is
the development of recommendations for strengthening Africa’s regulatory
framework for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, in close cooperation with the
Blockchain DLT Rwanda Association.
Babarinde noted that a robust regulatory framework will
be key to reducing the traction of cryptocurrency-related scams, alluding to
recent “unsolicited
activities” in East Africa. Earlier this month, the blockchain associations
of Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya issued a joint statement warning the public against
these risks.
This summer, the president of Uganda officiated the
2019 Africa Blockchain Conference, where he identified agriculture,
manufacturing and processing, services, and ICT sectors as key economic areas
that stand to benefit from the technology’s implementation.
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