The Kenya Blockchain & Artificial Intelligence (AI) Taskforce, instituted on February 2018 to study emerging technologies and their use case in the country, has finally released the long-awaited report.
Speaking during the launch of the report, the cabinet secretary, ICT Kenya, Joe Mucheru, said he was excited to finally receive the report and confident that it was well researched and ready to be presented to the President.
While handing over the report to Mucheru, the Chairman of the taskforce, Bitange Ndemo, highlighted the core areas where the team felt these technologies would be of greatest impact and ensure these use cases were added in the comprehensive report.
Of particular interest was the recommendation by the team for a digital sovereign cryptocurrency by the government that is accessible and can be tradable globally in line with the G20 Summit recommendation on the need for digital currencies to further enable financial inclusion globally.
The report has been made available to the public and for download here: http://www.ict.go.ke/blockchain.pdf
The report includes a number of key recommendations where blockchain & AI use in government will enable for more efficient service delivery. These include:
- Eliminating corruption through blockchain transparency and immutability
- Minimizing national debt through digital assets frameworks
- Strengthening democracy and elections by offering real-time immutable polling results
- Facilitate financial inclusion and reduce transaction costs through a national payment gateway leveraging blockchain
- Improvement of public service delivery via a single source of truth that leverages on blockchain
- Creation of a digital sovereign currency like MPESA that is tradable outside Kenyan borders with other global currencies digitally
- Delivery of affordable housing and allocation that matches buyers to sellers using the transparency of blockchain
- Improving health & drug safety by tracking and tracing medical supplies and service delivery
- Expand manufacturing and eliminate counterfeits by increasing visibility across the manufacturing value-chain
- Improve cyber-security by fully decentralizing Domain Name Systems and distributing the content drastically reducing attacks from hackers
- Improve land titling by digitizing and tokenizing land assets and creating ummutability and increase transparency via blockchain
- Improve cross-border trade that reduces shipping delays and ensures better and transparent tax remittances via blockchain
The report highlights key players and contributors in the blockchain and AI report and space in Kenya some of whom include:
- The Africa Digital Assets Framework (ADAF)
- M-Shule
- Twiga Foods
- The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) sandbox
- Central Bank of Kenya
- The Blockchain Association of Kenya
- BitPesa
- Bangla-Pesa by Grassroots Economics
- Safaricom Limited
The launch of the long-awaited report is proof that Kenya and East Africa is once again leading in Africa when it comes transitioning onto the blockchain space as it did by pioneering mobile money with MPESA.
