By David Njagi
Byrones Khainga may not have graced this year’s fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2.), held late February in Nairobi.
But the director of technical services at the Human Needs Project, a nonprofit serving Kenyans living in Kibera slum with safe water and clean environment through green solutions, is sure his community made a lasting print among environmental defenders.
Previously, Khainga led youth and women in Kibera in collecting plastic waste littering the slum and burned it aiming to clean up the environment. They have taken this further by recycling waste into art that can be traded as digital tokens.
Working with partners like Benjamin Von Wong, an international artist and activist who lobbies against single use plastics, Khainga’s team used waste collected from the slum to build a 30-foot-tall plastic tap.
Installed at the UN complex in Nairobi during the meeting, the giant plastic tap aimed to signify that the world is discharging single use plastics in patterns similar to how water flows from a tap, leading to environmental pollution.
Khainga’s team were not commissioned by the UN, but raised funds through the crypto market, demonstrating that technology can unlock opportunities where waste can be recycled into art and traded as digital tokens to generate money for social causes.
“The funds raised for the plastic tap were paid through the Solana cryptocurrency. This was something new for us but it is now going to be a trend informing how we implement our social activities,” said Khainga, during a one-on-one interview.
Using raffles and auctions, Von Wong led the fundraising which managed to collect 700 $ worth of Solana (about $66,000) by early March 2022.
Like in South Africa, Nigeria, and Ghana, the crypto market is becoming a popular means of raising funds for social driven projects in Kenya.
Roselyn Wanjiru, a researcher at the Association, said raising funds through the crypto market reduces barriers of entry for investments in seed projects, or those that are starting and need capital boost to take off.
This is because funds can be raised from different sources irrespective of the capital that an investor holds, she said.
It is also a fast way of raising funds for social causes because it can easily navigate around complex financial systems like investor accreditation that require proof of identity, said Wanjiru.
“Blockchain is one of the key technologies which is part of the fourth industrial revolution. Its social impact is that we are in that phase of adoption where we are seeing more companies using it to offer solutions to communities,” she said in a virtual interview.
The Central Bank of Kenya does not have data on crypto market in the country because trading in digital currencies is still unregulated.
But Africa Data, a digital publication for the continent’s business community, said in a January news article that some 4.8 million Kenyans, or about 16% of adult internet users own a cryptocurrency.
Freedom from regulation-which does not make cryptocurrencies illegal-has made the technology a fast way of raising funds between people who are continents apart, said Wanjiru.
At the human needs project in Kibera slum, the plastic art was traded through the Degen Trash Pandas, a Solana based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) community, according to a press release.
It created temporary jobs for about 100 residents in the slum, where women and youth were recruited to collect, clean, and sort plastic waste to prepare it for recycling into artistic creations.
The nonprofit aims to create hundreds more jobs on a permanent basis aiming to battle single use plastics in Kibera, said the press release.
It is not only in waste recycling where the crypto market is helping serve social good in Kenya. The technology is also being used to raise funds for education, food security, health and even women empowerment, said Wanjiru.
One reason for the growing appetite for the crypto system in fund raising is because traditional channels of funding are drying up, as the world struggles to recover from shocks like the COVID 19 pandemic.
Another is because social groups are fast adopting technology to drive economies in communities that felt left out by mainstream financial systems, she said.
To unlock opportunities in Kenya’s small economies, the nonprofit, Grassroots Economics has been issuing community currencies to poor Kenyans, which beneficiaries use to stock up their small and medium enterprises.
Sarafu, which means coins in English, is a virtual token issued by the nonprofit to over 50,000 struggling Kenyans, who also use it to pay for basics like food, health, and even shelter, according to officials.
https://www.grassrootseconomics.org/
Kenya Harmony Gender Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) aims to make the blockchain sector gender neutral by training women on how to trade in the crypto market.
https://talk.harmony.one/t/kenya-harmony-gender-dao/8939
At the national center for artificial intelligence and robotics in Nigeria, innovators are working with digital hubs in Africa, including Kenya, to address food insecurity in the continent through blockchain, said Usman Gambo Abdullahi, the center’s director.
“Blockchain has unique features like the ability to trace the origin of produce and also a database that cannot be tampered with. This makes it a key technology for addressing food insecurity in the continent,” said Abdullahi during a virtual meeting on digital transformation in agriculture for food security in Africa.
Abdullahi said a database is being created to monitor the flow of produce at countries’ point of entries so that officials can be able to trace its origin and destination, aiming to reduce food waste.
Caribou Digital, a social enterprise that uses innovation to connect farmers with markets works with Kenya’s farmers who have a good following on their online community groups.
The industrial body is introducing social agriculture, a system that simplifies digital technologies aimed at addressing challenges facing farmers through a bottom-up approach.
A bottom-up approach is one that ensures a big share of problem-solving resources are available at the farm, instead of being spent at office spaces, said, Emrys Schoemaker, a researcher and strategist at Caribou Digital.
According to him, social agriculture relies much on social media platforms like facebook. But mistrust among the social media community is slowing progress in online transactions.
This is where profiling food systems as digital tokens come in because they even out mistrust issues.
“Digital tokens are a reliable proof that somebody has given you something like a loan. It is a trusted token of something of value which we aim to introduce among farmers,” said Schoemaker during a virtual interview.
Abdullahi said the main challenge facing blockchain growth in Africa is because few people understand how it works.
“The ongoing meltdown where the crypto market has shed more than half of its value is also raising doubt about its stability as a risk-free system,” said Joe Mucheru, Kenya’s cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communications, during a media briefing.
Felix Osumu, the finance director at the Human Needs Project said setting up infrastructure to receive funds raised through the crypto system was the biggest challenge they faced.
But Big Mich, a choreographer who trains slum youth on how to develop and market their talent said electricity and internet penetration in Kenya is still a challenge for the struggling poor because it limits trading digital tokens through the crypto system.
Mich aims to develop her artistic creations into digital tokens to raise money for social causes in slum communities.
“There are concerns that crypto mining is contributing to global warming because of the huge amount of energy it consumes. But we must not overlook the good things this technology can provide for us,” said Mich during a one-on-one interview.
While she is working to market her dancing moves as digital tokens, she said technology helped slum communities mobilize food and washing materials during the COVID 19 lockdown.
Sci watch 