Blockchain technology holds great promise in Ethiopia, the largest coffee producer in Africa, but getting a foothold in the country is a challenge due its constraining bureaucracy. One blockchain company is finding inroads by directly collaborating with the government.
IOHK, the company behind the Cardano blockchain, has announced a partnership with the government of Ethiopia to explore how blockchain technology could benefit the country. As part of that, IOHK is offering to train up to 100 Ethiopian software developers in the Haskell programming language.
On Thursday, May 3, 2018, Charles Hoskinson, CEO at IOHK, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Minister Getahun Mekuria Kuma, representing an official partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology. The signing took place during a blockchain forum held at the ministry.
“Today is a great day in Ethiopia,” the minister said in speaking to forum attendees. He hinted that the greatest use case for blockchain technology would be tracking the country’s main export. “In Ethiopia, we have been working on the possibility of adopting blockchain for marketing of agricultural products, especially for coffee,” he said.
Government buy-in is crucial to establishing any large scale business or technology in Ethiopia. “If you don’t have it, it is not really going to happen,” John O’Connor, director of African operations at IOHK, told Bitcoin Magazine. “The Ministry and Dr. Getahan have been integral in the work we have done so far.”
While IOHK will provide free Haskell training, the ministry will help IOHK recruit students for the course and aid IOHK in navigating the business environment in the country.
Haskell Training
Cardano, which launched in October 2017[1], is written in Haskell, a functional programming language. Although Haskell is more challenging to learn than more popular languages, like Java
