BitKE caught up with Victor Mapunga, a Web3 entrepreneur from Zimbabwe, who is building a self-sovereign identity solution for the emerging world.
“The lack of identity affects over 1.7 billion people globally. In places like the Congo, they only do about 25% of all birth registrations. This is a country with close to 100 million people and no one knows how many people are in the Congo because the majority of them have no IDs.
Even in places like South East Asia, you’d think this problem has been solved but it hasn’t” – CEO, FlexID
Victor is a pioneer in technology and was selected and recognized as the first tech pioneer by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Victor is also a pioneer grantee by Algorand from Zimbabwe for FlexID, the identity solution that he has been working on for the last 2 years.
FlexID has also raised pre-seed round from the Algorand Foundation allowing the startup to go to market commercialize and go to market. Out of this, FlexID has also successfully partnered with a leading bank in Sri Lanka to roll out FlexID service, a milestone for the African continent.
FlexID also recently partnered with Uhuru Wallet, a crypto solution servicing the South African-Zimbabwean diasporan remittance corridor, a market worth over $1 billion. FlexID provides this informal market an identity layer and offer other services via the FlexID credentials.
FlexID also partnered with the Naitonal Savings Bank, which is the third-largest bank in the country to launched the first self-sovereign solution in South East Asia.
The discussion covers the following:
- 01:20 – About Victor Mapunga
- 06:10 – The state of Web3 in Zimbabwe
- 12:19 – State of economy in Zimbabwe
- 15:29 – Being a World Economic Forum (WEF) tech pioneer
- 19:02 – An insight into grants in Algorand
- 25:45 – What’s a safe investment?
- 27:12 – FlexID’s recent partnership
- 33:55 – Markets FlexID is targeting
- 37:35 – The Sri Lanka partnership
- 41:14 – The challenge of IDs in Sri Lanka
- 44:35 – How long to set up an ID system
- 47:05 – Flex ID scaling up
- 51:18 – Sage advice
