Bitcoin in Africa

[Mavrick]

Hi all,

I am from sub-Sahara Africa which has some brilliant minds and innovators and some of the poorest people on the plant too, I think the best way for mankind to progress faster than ever before is to share thoughts and programs to advance this reality to everyone.

They say people live on less than a dollar a day in neighboring countries even my own country!

I am asking for people to come together and help get Bitcoin into Africa so Africa can feed Africa!
Its time on this kind of platform that Africa can stand up and be counted.

Please join the conversation if you are here in Africa and abroad so that we can grow on the same level playing fields.

Thank you

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[Barek]

Hi all,

I am from sub-Sahara Africa which has some brilliant minds and innovators and some of the poorest people on the plant too, I think the best way for mankind to progress faster than ever before is to share thoughts and programs to advance this reality to everyone.

They say people live on less than a dollar a day in neighboring countries even my own country!

I am asking for people to come together and help get Bitcoin into Africa so Africa can feed Africa!
Its time on this kind of platform that Africa can stand up and be counted.

Please join the conversation if you are here in Africa and abroad so that we can grow on the same level playing fields.


Please if you can donate to the cause    1dcm6QPJ1kt5XdEzWNEm59ZZX9eWM1xcs

Thank you

Yay, another brand new account asking for donations.

You would get much better feedback without that address.

[Mavrick]

sorry you are right that wasnt the reason for posting the thread

its to help and not to be another "new account asking for donations"

[ohya?]

ya that's right!

[spin]

Perhaps this:

http://www.meetup.com/__ms122015192/Bitcoin-Cape-Town/events/161537572/t/ea1_grp/?rv=ea1&_af_eid=161537572&_af=event&expires=1390404904169&sig=e8ed073ad4fc6a978c96b4b630fb0dc0c0e68ccb

[Bostonbitcoin]

Please join the conversation if you are here in Africa and abroad so that we can grow on the same level playing fields.

I'd like to get in touch with anyone working on this.  I'm an economic advisor with an investment company and one of my clients is one of the worlds largest foundations which deals with the poor.   I've had some informal conversations about a Bitcoin with them and some others and think this area has a lot of potential.

[Mavrick]

We have working groups here in Johannesburg and thank you to the previous post we will get in touch with them in cape town.

however South Africa gets that exposure i am talking and highlighting not only here but in our neighbors too. we know there is a conversation here we trying to expand the conversation and interest in bitcoin get the word out .

ill send you a beer for that link to cape town   

[Mavrick]

just so you understand this is how its being seen in our media!

Want to make money mining bitcoins? Criminals have you beat

Summary: Bitcoins are becoming the "national currency" of criminals the world over and are becoming an increasingly poor investment for legitimate miners.

http://www.zdnet.com/want-to-make-money-mining-bitcoins-criminals-have-you-beat-7000025361/

[Gabi]

Great job removing the newbie restriction, now we get this shitty spamming everywhere 

[Mavrick]

Great job removing the newbie restriction, now we get this shitty spamming everywhere 

i am a newbie , it was not my intention to be seen as spamming and i removed the account!
yes we can use the funds but its not the reason i made the post.

thank you for your thought and help much appreciated

[jongameson]

Durban Poison.  it's a popular African strain of cannabis.  look it up

[Raya]

Great job removing the newbie restriction, now we get this shitty spamming everywhere 

I now see the down side of removing the restrictions.

[scottii]

awesome!  tell em to stop mining for diamonds, and start mining for btc!

[ArticMine]

If I can make a suggestion coming from Canada, a developed first world country it is this:

Create a service that makes it easy for people in Africa to receive payments in BTC and have those payments converted to local payment systems that the local people use much like Bit-pay does for merchants. A good example would be a BTC to M-PESA gateway for people in Kenya.

Let us say Bob in Kenya needs to receive payments from Alice in Canada. Bob would sign up with the service in Kenya and is provided with a custom web page on a site in Kenya and a password for a sender to use. Bob does not need to have Internet access. Bob then provides the password and the site url to Alice. This can even be done by regular (snail) mail. Alice then logs into the site with the password provided by Bob. Alice is provided with a Bitcoin address to send funds to Bob. After say 3 confirmations the M-PESA credit shows up on Bob's phone.

The key here is that the service in Kenya does not need to concern itself with how Alice obtains the BTC or learn how to use BTC or for that matter what the regulatory requirements are in Canada. Leave that up to the Bitcoin community in Canada. Replace Canada by any other "rich" country and one immediately sees the benefit Bitcoin can provide here.

I mention this because I still recall a situation 18 months ago. I was waiting in line at the local Post Office, ironically to pick up some documents I needed for my MTGox account. The fellow in front to me wanted to send 70 CAD to someone in Kenya. I could not avoid to overhear that it cost him in the neighbourhood of 10 CAD in fees. Do the math please.

[Mavrick]

If I can make a suggestion coming from Canada, a developed first world country it is this:

Create a service that makes it easy for people in Africa to receive payments in BTC and have those payments converted to local payment systems that the local people use much like Bit-pay does for merchants. A good example would be a BTC to M-PESA gateway for people in Kenya.

Let us say Bob in Kenya needs to receive payments from Alice in Canada. Bob would sign up with the service in Kenya and is provided with a custom web page on a site in Kenya and a password for a sender to use. Bob does not need to have Internet access. Bob then provides the password and the site url to Alice. This can even be done by regular (snail) mail. Alice then logs into the site with the password provided by Bob. Alice is provided with a Bitcoin address to send funds to Bob. After say 3 confirmations the M-PESA credit shows up on Bob's phone.

The key here is that the service in Kenya does not need to concern itself with how Alice obtains the BTC or learn how to use BTC or for that matter what the regulatory requirements are in Canada. Leave that up to the Bitcoin community in Canada. Replace Canada by any other "rich" country and one immediately sees the benefit Bitcoin can provide here.

I mention this because I still recall a situation 18 months ago. I was waiting in line at the local Post Office, ironically to pick up some documents I needed for my MTGox account. The fellow in front to me wanted to send 70 CAD to someone in Kenya. I could not avoid to overhear that it cost him in the neighbourhood of 10 CAD in fees. Do the math please.

this is brilliant you see we don't have the processing power or the actual electricity to mine as the rest of the world yay for power cuts.
this is what i am talking about ways Africa can enter the conversation! so thank you for the meaningful input.

[NanoAkron]

If I can make a suggestion coming from Canada, a developed first world country it is this:

Create a service that makes it easy for people in Africa to receive payments in BTC and have those payments converted to local payment systems that the local people use much like Bit-pay does for merchants. A good example would be a BTC to M-PESA gateway for people in Kenya.

Let us say Bob in Kenya needs to receive payments from Alice in Canada. Bob would sign up with the service in Kenya and is provided with a custom web page on a site in Kenya and a password for a sender to use. Bob does not need to have Internet access. Bob then provides the password and the site url to Alice. This can even be done by regular (snail) mail. Alice then logs into the site with the password provided by Bob. Alice is provided with a Bitcoin address to send funds to Bob. After say 3 confirmations the M-PESA credit shows up on Bob's phone.

The key here is that the service in Kenya does not need to concern itself with how Alice obtains the BTC or learn how to use BTC or for that matter what the regulatory requirements are in Canada. Leave that up to the Bitcoin community in Canada. Replace Canada by any other "rich" country and one immediately sees the benefit Bitcoin can provide here.

I mention this because I still recall a situation 18 months ago. I was waiting in line at the local Post Office, ironically to pick up some documents I needed for my MTGox account. The fellow in front to me wanted to send 70 CAD to someone in Kenya. I could not avoid to overhear that it cost him in the neighbourhood of 10 CAD in fees. Do the math please.

this is brilliant you see we don't have the processing power or the actual electricity to mine as the rest of the world yay for power cuts.
this is what i am talking about ways Africa can enter the conversation! so thank you for the meaningful input.

You don't need to mine to make an impact in the bitcoin world. Go look at zSIM, being run by seedco.in - it replaces M-PESA with bitcoins. There's also potential bitcoin ideas regarding banking, money transfer, secure messaging and much more.

You just need to come up with an idea that's suitable for your local area, a willing group of programmers and business people and make it happen!

[Mavrick]

understand !

lets say i can do all this and i am able to provide a public exchange  from bitcoin (and other crypto currencies) to local currencies
would i not get shot down within the day i start ?

this is kind of the reason for the post to build this kind of think tank for an african "trade platform"

[NanoAkron]

understand !

lets say i can do all this and i am able to provide a public exchange  from bitcoin (and other crypto currencies) to local currencies
would i not get shot down within the day i start ?

this is kind of the reason for the post to build this kind of think tank for an african "trade platform"

That all depends on local government behaviour I'm afraid - not something I can advise you on from behind a computer screen.

Maybe start with an advert in a paper to create a local meetup to form a discussion group and see where it goes from there.

[Mavrick]

ok lets say we take the different government out of the equation. how does the discussion start if not in a forum just like this one ?

[NanoAkron]

ok lets say we take the different government out of the equation. how does the discussion start if not in a forum just like this one ?

Read back to me what I wrote in my last reply.