The Story Of A Ugandan Prince And A Crypto Startup Planning For An African Revolution – Part 2

The Question Relevant Is, Why Did He Hit On Cryptocurrency?

According to Prince Kudra Kalema, they began using the $DALA protocol as it was clear that the financial structure in Uganda being not adequate it was clear they needed something as there is no way the Uganda shillings is stable enough for the type of program they were doing. As it has started to invest in the same country Wala wasn’t just about the idea of running a crypto coin in an emerging market, but also creating the best type of financial institutions for the country going hand in hand with what they were doing as it became a no-brainer. He further notes that Ugandans are saying that what they have right now does not work. 

Moving on he comments that the $DALA crypto to be combined with the solar project is much easier to run in Uganda than in the countries like the US where there is over 80 percent of Ugandans under 35 that are very well educated and doesn’t like the term leap-frogging whereas, in reality, this is what it is. Since they don’t have to unlearn anything than it was there before eager to figure out and learn the solution helping them. 

It has become powerful not because it was imposed when you look at how quickly mobile money was adopted by Ugandans but because people yearned for it. As Ugandans are stating that what they have right now doesn’t work as the banking transaction fees, the cost of remittances as they are difficult for them to be enthusiastic about something they know doesn’t work already.

Uganda is being viewed as the market hungry to adopt new technology along with the recent announcement that Binance launches a fiat to crypto exchange in the country as a recent example. 

Moving on with the discussion Uganda is always at the forefront of these types of things and even before they were a protectorate of the British Empire, it was part of the region where people travel to find out how to deal with things in Africa with the intricate tribal system. It is because of this that the British didn’t invade but made it a protectorate. 

As it comes to be the ambitious plans, Prince Kalema’s CPEM aims to create a gigawatt-scale solar power development program in Uganda providing clean energy to 25 percent of the population creating 200,000 new jobs in the clean energy economy. 

Whereas now the program would need more than double the current electricity generation capacity in Uganda where 75 percent of the population has no access to the energy. Ugandans are therefore using $DALA to consume the energy at zero transaction fees using it for the everyday purchases converting it back to fiat Ugandan currency via the agents/merchants and also the cryptocurrency exchanges. 

They have allowed the CPEM and the government of Uganda to make grants of the free power available to the poorest, it allows to keep a completely auditable and tamper-proof record of these grants. 

Here Is The Story Of How A Small Startup Came To Take African Markets By Storm 

Backed by angel investor and a social impact VC in the US was initially Tricia Martinez’s Wala joining the Barclays Techstars Accelerator in London and later setting up shop in Cape Town, South Africa and thereby started growing its team. Shortly the South African VC Newtown Partners invested and Wala has then issued the $DALA crypto-asset setting up the Dala Foundation. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Newtown is headed by Vinny Lingham of the well known Civic and Ethereum based project. 

Being passionate that cryptocurrency is going to be the solution needed by the emerging markets like Africa and needed for years Martinez says, the fact is that the unit of account, as well as the store of value for the program, is $DALA proving its utility and showing it's potential becoming a preferred financial system across emerging markets and excited to be involved from the ground level looking forward to play the part in creating a just and accessible financial system for consumers. 

Further explaining she says both the prince and the Ugandan government had needed a partner helping drive the financial inclusion getting them into a more efficient digital system and when hearing about them they started talking as they both saw the opportunity to build an entire ecosystem built on a crypto asset. 

She further states that it isn’t just consumers buying the energy cryptocurrency whereas the workers are building the energy grids to get paid in it as they have become very passionate about the blockchain especially from the energy perspective creating transparency working with the government creating more accountable records of what they are building out that could even reduce the potential for corruption. 

Finally, Martinez points out that it is in the hands of over 100,000 users in Uganda that already people are purchasing their electricity needs, products and services with the goal of the project for people who are getting the energy to be able to then tap into all these other services they are offering. Going to be launching cashing agents they are facilitating people to go to those mobile money agents around the corner to cash in and cash out to their wallet. 

Concluding Thoughts On The Discussion

Being a big project, some observers are seeing the words Uganda and Cryptocurrency in the same sentence and therefore without any doubt comes out with some kind of trite, dismissive, assessment. The context comes with Wala’s experience on the ground that cannot be emphasized enough on how important that is compared to the armchair commentators where most blockchain conference in the Western world is combined with the hunger of emerging nation, a passionate prince and also the ingenuity of the people that should not be underestimated.