The Blockchain revolution has so far been widely acknowledged in the developed world, but it is the developing regions that stand to gain the most from it. Africa, which is becoming a hotbed of innovation for aspiring technologists and Western & Asian Big Tech firms, is fast-becoming home to new and innovative digital asset use cases. However, to ensure this admirable rate of growth, regulators must ensure that they continue to police and guide existing players and consumers, in order to maximize its rewards.
The Blockchain revolution has so far been widely acknowledged in the developed world, but it is the developing regions that stand to gain the most from it. Africa, which is becoming a hotbed of innovation for aspiring technologists and Western & Asian Big Tech firms, is fast-becoming home to new and innovative digital asset use cases. However, to ensure this admirable rate of growth, regulators must ensure that they continue to police and guide existing players and consumers, in order to maximize its rewards.
The Blockchain revolution has so far been widely acknowledged in the developed world, but it is the developing regions that stand to gain the most from it. Africa, which is becoming a hotbed of innovation for aspiring technologists and Western & Asian Big Tech firms, is fast-becoming home to new and innovative digital asset use cases. However, to ensure this admirable rate of growth, regulators must ensure that they continue to police and guide existing players and consumers, in order to maximize its rewards.
Dialogues In Digital Transcript
Javaid Iqbal: Ernest, thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about the grander vision of where things are headed from the technology perspective. But before we get into that, let’s talk about you. Tell us about your life journey of learning and getting into these technologies. In many cases, way ahead of everyone else. How has that journey been, and how do you think that has prepared you for success in these complex entrepreneurial ways?
Ernest Mbenkum: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share about my background and what we are doing. I was born in Cameroon, but I had the opportunity to grow up in England, where my parents were completing their studies, and that’s where I first heard about computers, I was 7. So, that got my curiosity activated in me, and I felt that these technologies were having an incredible impact on the world. This was in the early ’80s when I gained knowledge about computers. And in the 1990s, through my dad’s work, I got my first laptop, and since then, I was able to build up that curiosity for learning various systems, software, and it really piqued my interest and then I was able to meet friends who had access to the internet back then, before the World Wide Web. In the early 90s and so through that journey, I was able to study at University, where I majored in computer science. And that allowed me to dive deeper into the academic process and, my passion for entrepreneurship and innovation was triggered.
My individual experiences were triggered in the early ’80s, when I was involved in little jobs and projects in Africa, buying magazines, spending money rather than going out, CD covers, experimenting, testing and doing subcontracting jobs. When I was 15, I had my first contract, networking, cleaning viruses that were very populous, and that led me to University where I could work. Around the year 2001, I launched my first company in England, and it wasn’t the easiest thing, but it gave me that first experience and since then I have been heavily involved in various projects and startups. That was challenging. Around 2003, I felt that other Africans should not face such challenges, and so I launched what became one of the first tech incubators in Africa in 2003. It was called Networking and Innovation: Netovate, and about 5 to 10 years later it became the Silicon Mountain Community that has some of the best programmers in the world.
Javaid Iqbal: So very interesting. The world understands Silicon Valley – Silicon Hills as it is often called – about China and their innovation, their ways into AI, Blockchain, and machine learning. Africa seems to be the next tech hub in the next 20 years. Innovation like this sets up the foundation. Talk about this evolution: what started the first incubator that you had, the company you built, the government involved, and what are some of the things that are being done right now that are being set up for the next evolution of technology?
Ernest Mbenkum: Basically, Africa isn’t going to be there in 20 years, it is already there right now. The difference is that Africa doesn’t get as much media and exposure as the rest of the world, and these are the underlying, preconceived notions that Netovate addressed. What the world needs to understand is that Africa also has access to the internet. Africa is not just one country, you know. It has 54 countries and what I did was also happening across the continent in little pockets of innovations with starting of all these incubators, platforms and ecosystems which were growing slowly on their own. What happens is that with the arrival of various telecoms, from 2G and 3G to now LTE and 5G, more and more people began to get access to information. So, even though people were relatively poor financially, they were exposed to the internet. With the social media available to them – Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Instagram – they were able to, at least, cover and leapfrog the Western markets in some ways.
Now, coming to 2019, where we are hoping about the fourth industrial revolution, it’s the first time that the rest of the world has an opportunity to catch up with everyone else. Knowledge is one of the keys to equality, that you can instantly get from Harvard, Cambridge or Ohio. Today you have the same knowledge available to everybody at the same time. And so, the Africans – the youth of Africa – have used this resource called the internet to tap into this vast knowledge to grow, and through this, if you can connect everyone with other communities, partner, and make their voices heard rather than the one-way narrative, they can now respond and share the exposure to the rest of the world.
Javaid Iqbal: Very Interesting. So, the way I look at it, Ernest, there are two brands of technology ecosystems that are now starting to come through. One is very human-centric where there are FAANG companies – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. But then there is a whole equivalent narrative of the Alibaba’s, the Chinese brands, etc. and they are equally fighting to spark a business war in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia. Which brand has been more successful in the African World, the 54 countries, so to speak, in the broader sense, and where do you think people are gravitating towards?
Ernest Mbenkum: So, obviously the US has been more popular in terms of marketing and branding, so there was this perception that whatever the US companies did was the best, which was true for a while, but China has caught up. Within Africa itself, to answer the question, platforms like Facebook and other social media platforms were free and it allowed Africans to leapfrog and catch up with the rest of the world. China has recently appeared on the scene. It’s mostly through Infrastructure projects and development, not so much through technology. Companies like Huawei have been able to provide basic infrastructure. So, while the West has come in with the social media and application layer, China has been the backbone providing the infrastructure, so it’s a very interesting dynamic.
But I think, recently platforms like Alibaba have filled this gap. A lot of Africa is buying from Alibaba and even their payment systems. This project seems to be accomplished. Jack Ma has launched investments on multiple initiatives of entrepreneurship to Africans. Three years ago, he came to East Africa to invest in startups and entrepreneurs.
Javaid Iqbal: So, what have been the success stories that are coming out of Africa in innovation on technology, be it solving a transportation problem, or financial gap or a health initiative. What have been the guarding unicorns that have been very successful?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well, one success story to do with financial inclusion, has been M-Pesa (Pesa is Swahili for money). It’s the biggest success story for mobile payments across the continent but largely in East Africa. It’s similar to what you have in Pakistan, which is Easypaisa, but M-Pesa has been very, very successful. Other platforms have come out like Jako, which is a platform for employment to help people from across the continent find jobs for attractive money. You find other platforms that use blockchain.
For example, the work we are doing in Cameroon, with the Cameroon Blockchain Initiative, which is a platform for providing the guidance and awareness for this new, emerging technology, as well as the Oasis AI platform which focuses on blockchain and artificial intelligence, which are the pillars of the fourth industrial revolution. So, from South Africa to East Africa to West Africa you find all these ecosystems that are rising and doing a lot of work. You have platforms like Andela in Nigeria, which are out there providing remote services to American and Western companies. The software developers are sitting underground and exporting talent.
Javaid Iqbal: From a policy perspective, largely the African continent, do the governments get how they can democratize technologies, and catch up with other continents? In aspects like wealth or are some countries emulating this better than others in position?
Ernest Mbenkum: Yeah. There is always a spectrum, right? Not everybody evolves at the same pace. You find South Africa to be quite advanced in terms of where they are going, even with their history and what they have in resources, and then you have East Africa, where you are equally advanced. You find Nigeria, which is very, very good in terms of incubations and startups. Cameroon is increasingly on the rise because of the silicon mountain ecosystem that is there. Various governments are supporting in their way. They have different platforms, different support mechanisms. There are many entrepreneurs or investors who become very successful and have been able to provide funding and support, one of which is the Tony Lumina Foundation out of Nigeria, which has poured about a hundred million dollars to support thousands of Africans across the continent. So, they help them at their very early seed stage by coaching, and guidance, etc.
And then you find a lot of entrepreneurs from Africa, who are also the diaspora, who invest and kickstart and governments have begun to recognize this. So, in the case of blockchain, you find the government of Uganda, the president has been active and taking a personal interest in blockchain, participating in events and taking it forward. And in Nigeria, there have been many groups such as the security exchange commission which has set up a framework to guide cryptocurrency and virtual currencies. Each market has a different pace. The more that countries embrace it, they will copy from the already advanced countries because nobody wants to be left behind.
One amazing story that I almost forgot about is Rwanda. Rwanda has become a Shining Star in the continent, in terms of innovation and transformation. You have a department of digital transformation. A gentleman heads the commission of digital transformation there and has been able to drive the Innovation in that continent. In Ethiopia, the new prime minister, who is in his forties and an engineer in computer science, so again, he is supporting the innovation. Each ecosystem and market have its private forces that by-and-large drives a continent that rises collectively.
Javaid Iqbal: Let’s take it up a few notches. We have been focusing on Africa, let’s go back up. You are bridging the gap between Canada and then working with Africa. Where do you see Innovation from a blockchain perspective headed globally? What do you think are the bigger challenges at the moment, with regards to the US, and do you think countries, companies, technologists have the right view to solve some of these challenges, to make it a little more democratized than centralized?
Ernest Mbenkum: Thanks for that question. So, the challenge is that Blockchain has been around for quite a while. Most recently, in the last 10 years is where it came together. There’s a lot of misconception; when we talk about blockchain, a lot of people focus on Bitcoin. Just like when the internet started in the early 90s, it was a very scary and dangerous place, until platforms like Yahoo came out, and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which brought the next billion people. When new technologies are misunderstood, the initial reaction is always fear. So, it takes companies and innovators who aren’t afraid to go deep to help inform the population and government. Governments have a role to protect the population and institutions because you always have bad actors that show up. So, you ultimately will find a few bad apples that pollute the ecosystem. Different markets have different regulatory mechanisms, but slowly and surely it is evolving. Regulators should not shut down but give a chance for Innovation to flourish.
Just Like the internet. Imagine you had to pay to send an email online today or through paid routes. So, blockchain should focus on the technology itself and not only focus on these occurrences. For us when you look at what’s happening recently, when I was invited to the United Nations on June 4th, 2019 for the Blockchain for Impact Summit. We talked about the 17 sustainable government goals (SGG), and one of them focuses on industry, innovation, and infrastructure that’s tied to blockchain and that’s what we are looking at now in our company to use it for social impact. What is it? Well, we are talking about financial inclusion, healthcare, and education.
So really, working in that direction, governments will continue to relax and realize that blockchain isn’t just for getting rich quick or multi-level marketing schemes but solving real-world problems, solving transparency, accountability, and trust. Particularly, I see the greatest impact of it on emerging markets, rather than the west and this is what allows this emerging market to leapfrog as well.
Javaid Iqbal: Let’s talk about your platform and how it’s bridging some of these gaps and bringing this knowledge to countries and companies in the developing world. Are you seeing that people across the board understand these tools, or is there a need to develop this kind of mindset?
Ernest Mbenkum: Our platform is called Interstellar. Interstellar is like a switch to transfer digital assets. So, what are digital assets? We convert what you have in the physical world into the virtual space, that can then be transferred between people. You look at stocks & bonds in the stock exchanges, but in our case, it involves the tokenization of commodities. You can tokenize from corn and coca plantation, to even your time, to bring investors. By digitizing these services, they become more liquid. Being a liquid, you can now trade and transfer them across the world. You don’t get restricted to certain markets. More-importantly, you do not get restricted to currencies with a central bank’s paradigm.
Going back thousands of years, we would have been constrained by the need to trade in commodities. To counter that, banking came in with cash, which became the intermediary. Now, in the 21st century, we’ll see our platform be used as a 21st-century barter-enabling platform. You come to our platform and you get some tea tokens to swap for rice tokens and you don’t have to deal with cash in dollars or rupees, so it’s a whole new paradigm. It takes a lot of getting used to because we are so used to dealing in currency, the federal dollar.
What Google did with websites – when websites became billions, searching and finding them became a problem, so they came up with a page rank algorithm – in the same way, we are building something on our platform which allows you to find a logic pathfinder to both find new assets, and trade them. Most people in emerging markets do not have access to capital, but they have access to assets that they can tokenize and trade them, without having to rely on getting physical cash. That is what our platform does and allows the transfer of these assets between countries, rather than being limited to your market only. For example, sitting in Cameroon, you can transfer money through an asset to the United States, for example. So, it opens them up to global markets.
Javaid Iqbal: Talk about some early success you guys have had in this. What countries or companies have specifically latched onto this concept? What are they looking to do with it? What are some of its use cases?
Ernest Mbenkum: Interestingly, this platform was developed in Cameroon, it’s important to say that. We have a brilliant CTO who led the development team to where it is today. This platform has done a lot to bring people into the world of blockchain. Something curious has also happened. Our platform is now in 142 countries around the world, but something happened in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia. There was a community of traders – street hawkers – who had been trying to build a blockchain to build a system for loyalty points, where you are engaging a community to keep them together. This community is called Dirona and they grew to over a million people. Through our platform, they were able to tokenize what they had and build an incredibly powerful loyalty platform.
Another powerful use case was at a company near us, called Give Direct, the first global platform built on blockchain providing and reducing poverty in the world. Traditionally when money is raised, let’s say when it floods or any disaster, by the time it gets to the destination, it’s significantly reduced. With our platform, we were able to receive donations in all these different tokenized assets: rice, tea, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple. They used our pathfinder to convert to the stable coin – that is US dollar or bitcoin. When the time came to distribute this, they used our platform to convert. Our platform has something unique: for 5% of people, they have to sign a form before their funds could be released.
Javaid Iqbal: To guarantee the security of the system.
Ernest Mbenkum: You can’t cut the system. They are all distributors. In the particular use-case where they sign in Ghana, for example, after identifying the 34 families that needed this money, to ensure that they went to the right person, we provided NFC wristbands which biometrically linked to the person, which were to be scanned to release the money. So, if someone receives the funds in Karachi, you can see the entire lifecycle of the journey of funds.
Javaid Iqbal: Very interesting use cases for all donor agencies around the world. Who’s a close competitor of yours or someone who is doing this thing at a similar scale to Interstellar?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well, there are many platforms out there that are playing in this space at the moment, but we don’t see a lot of the competitors. What happens is that we find a lot of companies are using different aspects of our platform. So, we have gone after them.
We have something called KYC and AML. There’s a company called Civic that’s doing that out of South Africa. Then you have a company called ShapeShift that does the currency conversion of different assets. You have other wallets like blockchain, Info Lobster in the Interstellar ecosystem, but our platform brings all of these things into one unified ecosystem. It’s not just independent pieces.
Javaid Iqbal: Where do you see the future in this?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well, we are very, very excited because we see this as a tool for solving a major problem in the developing world today. If you desire to make the world a better place, the core thing to talk about is financial inclusion. This is the 21st Century, we are recording this in 2019. 85% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to bank accounts. The same is here in Pakistan. 1.7 Billion people are excluded from the financial sector around the World. So, what blockchain permits are what we call micro and nano-finance. That banks with their current structures cannot provide. You think you can get a smart contract. Selling fish or corn for 30 years, you are still unable to get in loan or line of credit. But this platform ensures this. You could be transacting more than a billion dollars but you have no proof of that. With blockchain now, this can bring these people to the surface, and through their credit scores empower them now, so they can get access to loans and credits and open up a whole new ecosystem. We believe that what we are playing with is just like a small role in this, and we believe that the government should re-purpose or re-design to bring a completely new paradigm shift. We do think that it’s a good thing, and it’s going to re-imagine the world of the future, where we look at money differently. We look at a new sharing economy evolving against this economy, where we are self-centered towards more collaboration. This is true about Africa, where we have a term called a Silicon Mountain, that we call Glocalization.
Javaid Iqbal: Glocalization? I like that. Global with a local twist.
Ernest Mbenkum: Global-local footprint. So, we build platforms locally which have a global impact. So, you are focusing on developing the local ecosystem, using local talent and resources, building it for global impact.
Javaid Iqbal: Globally, it is becoming easier because of the connectivity and acquisition of technologies like AI. Where do you get this inspiration? Is it being there a certain figure that you’ve evolved or how do you bake that energy that you have towards solving these big problems? Is it through the cultural aspect, religion or people’s virtues? What catches you?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well. Interesting. First and foremost, I always had this passion to reduce suffering. I see the world is full of incredible resources that are not equally distributed. So, I felt it at a very early age that how could I create impact by leaving the footprints in this world. That footprint is not only about me but how many lives have been changed through the work that we are doing. Because we often get lost when we become wealthy or become successful, and we forget that our success is the work of people who have supported us, so to speak. So, when we talk about loving society, we have to turn back and serve. There are only so many hours you have in a day, and when we die you don’t remember how much money we made but about how many lives we changed, and that inspiration is about funding little random acts of kindness. It doesn’t cost you much to contribute to making a difference. When you inspire people one plus one becomes a billion. And, for me, it has been a long and fulfilling journey to see how to make this small but long-term impact and it is not easy. Coming from a continent that has traditionally struggled with all the challenges that it faces but at this point I think we now have a unique opportunity to make a difference. Many people, not just me are giving back and contributing and that’s a real inspiration, seeing that. I always tell people: stay hungry, stay foolish. We often think that “Okay, I’ve gone to school, I graduated, I did my Ph.D. All of that is just climbing one mountain but there are many other mountains, so keep learning, and always remains hungry.
I am never satisfied with a new thing. It’s really about finding and inspiring people continuously. Once we lose that drive, we lose everything and so we have to keep that fire, inspire more and more people, and show them that it is possible to be successful. I wouldn’t say I grew up in a bunch of very poor families, but ultimately success doesn’t always mean that we sit and think that we became successful. I define my success by how many lives I have transformed and impacted, the recognition for that and how can I make the world a better place.
Javaid Iqbal: So, Ernest, if there is a budding student out there that’s about to get into a university and in high school still. Their whole life is ahead of them. Given what you know now when things are global with technology in Blockchain, IoT, cloud, big data, analytics, etc, what advice would you give to them?
Ernest Mbenkum: It’s very challenging because what is happening now is what I call is academic inflation, so education has become readily available to everybody. With the internet now, you know MIT, Harvard and other top universities on the earth. You can sit at home and through platforms like Udacity and Code Academy anybody can do this. In the 1990s, when I was playing with technology, you had to be a computer engineer to use a computer. Today if you don’t know how to use a computer, people will find you dumb because anybody can use it.
What I see is, the re-definition of education, which is defined by a famous Indian educator as a self-organizing learning environment (SOLE). It is more about a smartphone and a symbiotic relationship between the teachers and the students. It is no longer a hierarchy. We have to look again at educational institutions, why are they important and relevant. Their curriculums need to adapt because they are not evolving. When you look at how education has evolved in the last 70-80 years, much of the classrooms are the same. Look at the phones we have today that, we didn’t have those 50-60 years ago. Everything has changed but classrooms, by-and-large have remained the same. So those have to be radically transformed for students. Education is important but it doesn’t end in a classroom, and as well even if you are focused on one thing, it is important to have skills, like programming, for instance. Just like we all speak English today or know how to read and write. I believe everyone in this generation knows how to grow whether you are PAAS-oriented or SAAS oriented, just like we all know how to use WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook. How about learning how to program? If you don’t know how to program, you’ll be programmed.
Javaid Iqbal: That is a very scary note. It’s a basic skill to have. On that very inspirational note, we wish you all the success and thank you for your time. And something that you said, that has been said many times before, is to stay hungry and stay foolish. Good luck with your endeavors.
Ernest Mbenkum: Thank you.
About the speaker(s)
Ernest Mbenkum is an impact entrepreneur, inventor, and an investor in the areas of Blockchain, DLT and DAG Technology. His firm has created multiple next-generation Blockchain-based applications and services for the financial sector in the developed markets as well Africa.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mbenkum/
Javaid Iqbal is the Co-Founder & CEO of TransformX. He has previously served as a Customer Success & Engagement Leader at Salesforce and held various leadership positions at multiple consultancies including EY and PwC where he spearheaded large-scale complex business transformation efforts for global Fortune 100 clients and Federal & State and Local governments across North America, Europe & Asia.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jiqbal/
About Dialogues In Digital
The rampant pace of technology and its impact on the environment often makes it near-impossible to take a breath and realize the countless upheavals affecting organizations, industries, and societies in real-time. Events and breakthroughs with widespread repercussions can go unaccounted for and their potential lost forever. TransformX’s Dialogues In Digital Series is one attempt to assemble business leaders from a wide cross-section of industries and geographies to share their insights on such disruptive developments and highlight the role that key stakeholders in the leadership ranks can play in their sphere to become a crucial cog of their industries and ecosystems. Catch these conversations on our YouTube channel and follow us on our social feeds for the latest and greatest in the world of digital innovation.
Dialogues In Digital Transcript
Javaid Iqbal: Ernest, thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about the grander vision of where things are headed from the technology perspective. But before we get into that, let’s talk about you. Tell us about your life journey of learning and getting into these technologies. In many cases, way ahead of everyone else. How has that journey been, and how do you think that has prepared you for success in these complex entrepreneurial ways?
Ernest Mbenkum: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share about my background and what we are doing. I was born in Cameroon, but I had the opportunity to grow up in England, where my parents were completing their studies, and that’s where I first heard about computers, I was 7. So, that got my curiosity activated in me, and I felt that these technologies were having an incredible impact on the world. This was in the early ’80s when I gained knowledge about computers. And in the 1990s, through my dad’s work, I got my first laptop, and since then, I was able to build up that curiosity for learning various systems, software, and it really piqued my interest and then I was able to meet friends who had access to the internet back then, before the World Wide Web. In the early 90s and so through that journey, I was able to study at University, where I majored in computer science. And that allowed me to dive deeper into the academic process and, my passion for entrepreneurship and innovation was triggered.
My individual experiences were triggered in the early ’80s, when I was involved in little jobs and projects in Africa, buying magazines, spending money rather than going out, CD covers, experimenting, testing and doing subcontracting jobs. When I was 15, I had my first contract, networking, cleaning viruses that were very populous, and that led me to University where I could work. Around the year 2001, I launched my first company in England, and it wasn’t the easiest thing, but it gave me that first experience and since then I have been heavily involved in various projects and startups. That was challenging. Around 2003, I felt that other Africans should not face such challenges, and so I launched what became one of the first tech incubators in Africa in 2003. It was called Networking and Innovation: Netovate, and about 5 to 10 years later it became the Silicon Mountain Community that has some of the best programmers in the world.
Javaid Iqbal: So very interesting. The world understands Silicon Valley – Silicon Hills as it is often called – about China and their innovation, their ways into AI, Blockchain, and machine learning. Africa seems to be the next tech hub in the next 20 years. Innovation like this sets up the foundation. Talk about this evolution: what started the first incubator that you had, the company you built, the government involved, and what are some of the things that are being done right now that are being set up for the next evolution of technology?
Ernest Mbenkum: Basically, Africa isn’t going to be there in 20 years, it is already there right now. The difference is that Africa doesn’t get as much media and exposure as the rest of the world, and these are the underlying, preconceived notions that Netovate addressed. What the world needs to understand is that Africa also has access to the internet. Africa is not just one country, you know. It has 54 countries and what I did was also happening across the continent in little pockets of innovations with starting of all these incubators, platforms and ecosystems which were growing slowly on their own. What happens is that with the arrival of various telecoms, from 2G and 3G to now LTE and 5G, more and more people began to get access to information. So, even though people were relatively poor financially, they were exposed to the internet. With the social media available to them – Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Instagram – they were able to, at least, cover and leapfrog the Western markets in some ways.
Now, coming to 2019, where we are hoping about the fourth industrial revolution, it’s the first time that the rest of the world has an opportunity to catch up with everyone else. Knowledge is one of the keys to equality, that you can instantly get from Harvard, Cambridge or Ohio. Today you have the same knowledge available to everybody at the same time. And so, the Africans – the youth of Africa – have used this resource called the internet to tap into this vast knowledge to grow, and through this, if you can connect everyone with other communities, partner, and make their voices heard rather than the one-way narrative, they can now respond and share the exposure to the rest of the world.
Javaid Iqbal: Very Interesting. So, the way I look at it, Ernest, there are two brands of technology ecosystems that are now starting to come through. One is very human-centric where there are FAANG companies – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. But then there is a whole equivalent narrative of the Alibaba’s, the Chinese brands, etc. and they are equally fighting to spark a business war in the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia. Which brand has been more successful in the African World, the 54 countries, so to speak, in the broader sense, and where do you think people are gravitating towards?
Ernest Mbenkum: So, obviously the US has been more popular in terms of marketing and branding, so there was this perception that whatever the US companies did was the best, which was true for a while, but China has caught up. Within Africa itself, to answer the question, platforms like Facebook and other social media platforms were free and it allowed Africans to leapfrog and catch up with the rest of the world. China has recently appeared on the scene. It’s mostly through Infrastructure projects and development, not so much through technology. Companies like Huawei have been able to provide basic infrastructure. So, while the West has come in with the social media and application layer, China has been the backbone providing the infrastructure, so it’s a very interesting dynamic.
But I think, recently platforms like Alibaba have filled this gap. A lot of Africa is buying from Alibaba and even their payment systems. This project seems to be accomplished. Jack Ma has launched investments on multiple initiatives of entrepreneurship to Africans. Three years ago, he came to East Africa to invest in startups and entrepreneurs.
Javaid Iqbal: So, what have been the success stories that are coming out of Africa in innovation on technology, be it solving a transportation problem, or financial gap or a health initiative. What have been the guarding unicorns that have been very successful?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well, one success story to do with financial inclusion, has been M-Pesa (Pesa is Swahili for money). It’s the biggest success story for mobile payments across the continent but largely in East Africa. It’s similar to what you have in Pakistan, which is Easypaisa, but M-Pesa has been very, very successful. Other platforms have come out like Jako, which is a platform for employment to help people from across the continent find jobs for attractive money. You find other platforms that use blockchain.
For example, the work we are doing in Cameroon, with the Cameroon Blockchain Initiative, which is a platform for providing the guidance and awareness for this new, emerging technology, as well as the Oasis AI platform which focuses on blockchain and artificial intelligence, which are the pillars of the fourth industrial revolution. So, from South Africa to East Africa to West Africa you find all these ecosystems that are rising and doing a lot of work. You have platforms like Andela in Nigeria, which are out there providing remote services to American and Western companies. The software developers are sitting underground and exporting talent.
Javaid Iqbal: From a policy perspective, largely the African continent, do the governments get how they can democratize technologies, and catch up with other continents? In aspects like wealth or are some countries emulating this better than others in position?
Ernest Mbenkum: Yeah. There is always a spectrum, right? Not everybody evolves at the same pace. You find South Africa to be quite advanced in terms of where they are going, even with their history and what they have in resources, and then you have East Africa, where you are equally advanced. You find Nigeria, which is very, very good in terms of incubations and startups. Cameroon is increasingly on the rise because of the silicon mountain ecosystem that is there. Various governments are supporting in their way. They have different platforms, different support mechanisms. There are many entrepreneurs or investors who become very successful and have been able to provide funding and support, one of which is the Tony Lumina Foundation out of Nigeria, which has poured about a hundred million dollars to support thousands of Africans across the continent. So, they help them at their very early seed stage by coaching, and guidance, etc.
And then you find a lot of entrepreneurs from Africa, who are also the diaspora, who invest and kickstart and governments have begun to recognize this. So, in the case of blockchain, you find the government of Uganda, the president has been active and taking a personal interest in blockchain, participating in events and taking it forward. And in Nigeria, there have been many groups such as the security exchange commission which has set up a framework to guide cryptocurrency and virtual currencies. Each market has a different pace. The more that countries embrace it, they will copy from the already advanced countries because nobody wants to be left behind.
One amazing story that I almost forgot about is Rwanda. Rwanda has become a Shining Star in the continent, in terms of innovation and transformation. You have a department of digital transformation. A gentleman heads the commission of digital transformation there and has been able to drive the Innovation in that continent. In Ethiopia, the new prime minister, who is in his forties and an engineer in computer science, so again, he is supporting the innovation. Each ecosystem and market have its private forces that by-and-large drives a continent that rises collectively.
Javaid Iqbal: Let’s take it up a few notches. We have been focusing on Africa, let’s go back up. You are bridging the gap between Canada and then working with Africa. Where do you see Innovation from a blockchain perspective headed globally? What do you think are the bigger challenges at the moment, with regards to the US, and do you think countries, companies, technologists have the right view to solve some of these challenges, to make it a little more democratized than centralized?
Ernest Mbenkum: Thanks for that question. So, the challenge is that Blockchain has been around for quite a while. Most recently, in the last 10 years is where it came together. There’s a lot of misconception; when we talk about blockchain, a lot of people focus on Bitcoin. Just like when the internet started in the early 90s, it was a very scary and dangerous place, until platforms like Yahoo came out, and Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, which brought the next billion people. When new technologies are misunderstood, the initial reaction is always fear. So, it takes companies and innovators who aren’t afraid to go deep to help inform the population and government. Governments have a role to protect the population and institutions because you always have bad actors that show up. So, you ultimately will find a few bad apples that pollute the ecosystem. Different markets have different regulatory mechanisms, but slowly and surely it is evolving. Regulators should not shut down but give a chance for Innovation to flourish.
Just Like the internet. Imagine you had to pay to send an email online today or through paid routes. So, blockchain should focus on the technology itself and not only focus on these occurrences. For us when you look at what’s happening recently, when I was invited to the United Nations on June 4th, 2019 for the Blockchain for Impact Summit. We talked about the 17 sustainable government goals (SGG), and one of them focuses on industry, innovation, and infrastructure that’s tied to blockchain and that’s what we are looking at now in our company to use it for social impact. What is it? Well, we are talking about financial inclusion, healthcare, and education.
So really, working in that direction, governments will continue to relax and realize that blockchain isn’t just for getting rich quick or multi-level marketing schemes but solving real-world problems, solving transparency, accountability, and trust. Particularly, I see the greatest impact of it on emerging markets, rather than the west and this is what allows this emerging market to leapfrog as well.
Javaid Iqbal: Let’s talk about your platform and how it’s bridging some of these gaps and bringing this knowledge to countries and companies in the developing world. Are you seeing that people across the board understand these tools, or is there a need to develop this kind of mindset?
Ernest Mbenkum: Our platform is called Interstellar. Interstellar is like a switch to transfer digital assets. So, what are digital assets? We convert what you have in the physical world into the virtual space, that can then be transferred between people. You look at stocks & bonds in the stock exchanges, but in our case, it involves the tokenization of commodities. You can tokenize from corn and coca plantation, to even your time, to bring investors. By digitizing these services, they become more liquid. Being a liquid, you can now trade and transfer them across the world. You don’t get restricted to certain markets. More-importantly, you do not get restricted to currencies with a central bank’s paradigm.
Going back thousands of years, we would have been constrained by the need to trade in commodities. To counter that, banking came in with cash, which became the intermediary. Now, in the 21st century, we’ll see our platform be used as a 21st-century barter-enabling platform. You come to our platform and you get some tea tokens to swap for rice tokens and you don’t have to deal with cash in dollars or rupees, so it’s a whole new paradigm. It takes a lot of getting used to because we are so used to dealing in currency, the federal dollar.
What Google did with websites – when websites became billions, searching and finding them became a problem, so they came up with a page rank algorithm – in the same way, we are building something on our platform which allows you to find a logic pathfinder to both find new assets, and trade them. Most people in emerging markets do not have access to capital, but they have access to assets that they can tokenize and trade them, without having to rely on getting physical cash. That is what our platform does and allows the transfer of these assets between countries, rather than being limited to your market only. For example, sitting in Cameroon, you can transfer money through an asset to the United States, for example. So, it opens them up to global markets.
Javaid Iqbal: Talk about some early success you guys have had in this. What countries or companies have specifically latched onto this concept? What are they looking to do with it? What are some of its use cases?
Ernest Mbenkum: Interestingly, this platform was developed in Cameroon, it’s important to say that. We have a brilliant CTO who led the development team to where it is today. This platform has done a lot to bring people into the world of blockchain. Something curious has also happened. Our platform is now in 142 countries around the world, but something happened in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia. There was a community of traders – street hawkers – who had been trying to build a blockchain to build a system for loyalty points, where you are engaging a community to keep them together. This community is called Dirona and they grew to over a million people. Through our platform, they were able to tokenize what they had and build an incredibly powerful loyalty platform.
Another powerful use case was at a company near us, called Give Direct, the first global platform built on blockchain providing and reducing poverty in the world. Traditionally when money is raised, let’s say when it floods or any disaster, by the time it gets to the destination, it’s significantly reduced. With our platform, we were able to receive donations in all these different tokenized assets: rice, tea, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple. They used our pathfinder to convert to the stable coin – that is US dollar or bitcoin. When the time came to distribute this, they used our platform to convert. Our platform has something unique: for 5% of people, they have to sign a form before their funds could be released.
Javaid Iqbal: To guarantee the security of the system.
Ernest Mbenkum: You can’t cut the system. They are all distributors. In the particular use-case where they sign in Ghana, for example, after identifying the 34 families that needed this money, to ensure that they went to the right person, we provided NFC wristbands which biometrically linked to the person, which were to be scanned to release the money. So, if someone receives the funds in Karachi, you can see the entire lifecycle of the journey of funds.
Javaid Iqbal: Very interesting use cases for all donor agencies around the world. Who’s a close competitor of yours or someone who is doing this thing at a similar scale to Interstellar?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well, there are many platforms out there that are playing in this space at the moment, but we don’t see a lot of the competitors. What happens is that we find a lot of companies are using different aspects of our platform. So, we have gone after them.
We have something called KYC and AML. There’s a company called Civic that’s doing that out of South Africa. Then you have a company called ShapeShift that does the currency conversion of different assets. You have other wallets like blockchain, Info Lobster in the Interstellar ecosystem, but our platform brings all of these things into one unified ecosystem. It’s not just independent pieces.
Javaid Iqbal: Where do you see the future in this?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well, we are very, very excited because we see this as a tool for solving a major problem in the developing world today. If you desire to make the world a better place, the core thing to talk about is financial inclusion. This is the 21st Century, we are recording this in 2019. 85% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to bank accounts. The same is here in Pakistan. 1.7 Billion people are excluded from the financial sector around the World. So, what blockchain permits are what we call micro and nano-finance. That banks with their current structures cannot provide. You think you can get a smart contract. Selling fish or corn for 30 years, you are still unable to get in loan or line of credit. But this platform ensures this. You could be transacting more than a billion dollars but you have no proof of that. With blockchain now, this can bring these people to the surface, and through their credit scores empower them now, so they can get access to loans and credits and open up a whole new ecosystem. We believe that what we are playing with is just like a small role in this, and we believe that the government should re-purpose or re-design to bring a completely new paradigm shift. We do think that it’s a good thing, and it’s going to re-imagine the world of the future, where we look at money differently. We look at a new sharing economy evolving against this economy, where we are self-centered towards more collaboration. This is true about Africa, where we have a term called a Silicon Mountain, that we call Glocalization.
Javaid Iqbal: Glocalization? I like that. Global with a local twist.
Ernest Mbenkum: Global-local footprint. So, we build platforms locally which have a global impact. So, you are focusing on developing the local ecosystem, using local talent and resources, building it for global impact.
Javaid Iqbal: Globally, it is becoming easier because of the connectivity and acquisition of technologies like AI. Where do you get this inspiration? Is it being there a certain figure that you’ve evolved or how do you bake that energy that you have towards solving these big problems? Is it through the cultural aspect, religion or people’s virtues? What catches you?
Ernest Mbenkum: Well. Interesting. First and foremost, I always had this passion to reduce suffering. I see the world is full of incredible resources that are not equally distributed. So, I felt it at a very early age that how could I create impact by leaving the footprints in this world. That footprint is not only about me but how many lives have been changed through the work that we are doing. Because we often get lost when we become wealthy or become successful, and we forget that our success is the work of people who have supported us, so to speak. So, when we talk about loving society, we have to turn back and serve. There are only so many hours you have in a day, and when we die you don’t remember how much money we made but about how many lives we changed, and that inspiration is about funding little random acts of kindness. It doesn’t cost you much to contribute to making a difference. When you inspire people one plus one becomes a billion. And, for me, it has been a long and fulfilling journey to see how to make this small but long-term impact and it is not easy. Coming from a continent that has traditionally struggled with all the challenges that it faces but at this point I think we now have a unique opportunity to make a difference. Many people, not just me are giving back and contributing and that’s a real inspiration, seeing that. I always tell people: stay hungry, stay foolish. We often think that “Okay, I’ve gone to school, I graduated, I did my Ph.D. All of that is just climbing one mountain but there are many other mountains, so keep learning, and always remains hungry.
I am never satisfied with a new thing. It’s really about finding and inspiring people continuously. Once we lose that drive, we lose everything and so we have to keep that fire, inspire more and more people, and show them that it is possible to be successful. I wouldn’t say I grew up in a bunch of very poor families, but ultimately success doesn’t always mean that we sit and think that we became successful. I define my success by how many lives I have transformed and impacted, the recognition for that and how can I make the world a better place.
Javaid Iqbal: So, Ernest, if there is a budding student out there that’s about to get into a university and in high school still. Their whole life is ahead of them. Given what you know now when things are global with technology in Blockchain, IoT, cloud, big data, analytics, etc, what advice would you give to them?
Ernest Mbenkum: It’s very challenging because what is happening now is what I call is academic inflation, so education has become readily available to everybody. With the internet now, you know MIT, Harvard and other top universities on the earth. You can sit at home and through platforms like Udacity and Code Academy anybody can do this. In the 1990s, when I was playing with technology, you had to be a computer engineer to use a computer. Today if you don’t know how to use a computer, people will find you dumb because anybody can use it.
What I see is, the re-definition of education, which is defined by a famous Indian educator as a self-organizing learning environment (SOLE). It is more about a smartphone and a symbiotic relationship between the teachers and the students. It is no longer a hierarchy. We have to look again at educational institutions, why are they important and relevant. Their curriculums need to adapt because they are not evolving. When you look at how education has evolved in the last 70-80 years, much of the classrooms are the same. Look at the phones we have today that, we didn’t have those 50-60 years ago. Everything has changed but classrooms, by-and-large have remained the same. So those have to be radically transformed for students. Education is important but it doesn’t end in a classroom, and as well even if you are focused on one thing, it is important to have skills, like programming, for instance. Just like we all speak English today or know how to read and write. I believe everyone in this generation knows how to grow whether you are PAAS-oriented or SAAS oriented, just like we all know how to use WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook. How about learning how to program? If you don’t know how to program, you’ll be programmed.
Javaid Iqbal: That is a very scary note. It’s a basic skill to have. On that very inspirational note, we wish you all the success and thank you for your time. And something that you said, that has been said many times before, is to stay hungry and stay foolish. Good luck with your endeavors.
Ernest Mbenkum: Thank you.
About the speaker(s)
Ernest Mbenkum is an impact entrepreneur, inventor, and an investor in the areas of Blockchain, DLT and DAG Technology. His firm has created multiple next-generation Blockchain-based applications and services for the financial sector in the developed markets as well Africa.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mbenkum/
Javaid Iqbal is the Co-Founder & CEO of TransformX. He has previously served as a Customer Success & Engagement Leader at Salesforce and held various leadership positions at multiple consultancies including EY and PwC where he spearheaded large-scale complex business transformation efforts for global Fortune 100 clients and Federal & State and Local governments across North America, Europe & Asia.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jiqbal/
About Dialogues In Digital
The rampant pace of technology and its impact on the environment often makes it near-impossible to take a breath and realize the countless upheavals affecting organizations, industries, and societies in real-time. Events and breakthroughs with widespread repercussions can go unaccounted for and their potential lost forever. TransformX’s Dialogues In Digital Series is one attempt to assemble business leaders from a wide cross-section of industries and geographies to share their insights on such disruptive developments and highlight the role that key stakeholders in the leadership ranks can play in their sphere to become a crucial cog of their industries and ecosystems. Catch these conversations on our YouTube channel and follow us on our social feeds for the latest and greatest in the world of digital innovation.
