Firstly, I would like to thank the team over at Bitnob for providing this opportunity for me to showcase what I think are the pondering issues in the African space and how Bitcoin can play a vital role in tackling those issues.Special thanks must also go to my very good friend Theodora (Theo as I would fondly call her) for introducing me to Bitnob and this hackathon.
divided into economic and social problems.
Lets start with the Economic Problem; Unemployment in Africa is currently at an all-time high.Countries like South Africa and Nigeria sit at the top of Countries with the highest unemployment rates.This doesn’t tell well especially of the latter’s status as the ‘Giant of Africa’
This brings me to the first problem “Africa and the problem of unemployment”
Lets now dive into the Social Problem; This is the 21st century and it’s really sad that we find ourselves living in a society where our basic and fundamental human rights are being trampled upon. Although one may argue that violations of human rights is a global problem; which is quite true but a lookup of stats from the United Nations proof that Africa compared to it’s European & American counterparts are leaning behind in terms of recognizing our basic human rights.
This brings me to the second problem “Africa and the challenges of providing a safe environment for BITCOIN investors”
You may be wondering what the connection between Human rights and A safe environment for bitcoin investors is? The answer is Human left (I hope that joke put a smile on your face).
A more practical example that would enable us makes sense of the connection between the both is the twitter ban in Nigeria;
The ban on twitter in Nigeria opposes Article 19 of the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights which states that “Everyone has the rights to freedom of opinion and expression; this rights includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impact information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
As cited in an article on Pulse.ng 39 million Nigerians use twitter, 18 million of those Nigerians use twitter for their businesses and a whooping 7.6 million of those Nigerians use twitter to communicate with fellow Bitcoin investors, use twitter for cryptocurrency education and enlightenment.As a result of the ban on twitter in Nigeria which has been deemed an abuse of human right, only echoes doom as Nigerians would be left behind in the fast paced global crypto world, loosing out on crypto related jobs, and credibility in the global crypto space.
THE SOLUTION;
Honestly what seems to be the best solution is to miraculously sleep and wake up as president and enact some laws and policies that facilitate the decrease in the aforementioned problems, but while waiting for me to become president or for the federal government to uplift the ban on twitter we can alternatively make use of the the BitHub App that seeks to breach the gap between Bitcoin investors and other Bitcoin investors; the idea of this app is to enable Bitnobbers(an unofficial name I call Bitnob users)
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Communicate with each other through private chat.
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Post on the timeline which can be read by other users.
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Provide a platform for freelance Bitnobbers to showcase their services to other users and get paid in Bitcoin (Reducing unemployment in Africa).
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Send and request Bitcoin easily from other users powered by the Bitnob API.
In respect to the the Hackathon instructions which states we should build a minimum viable products (MVP) ,the first release of this app wouldn't be cross platform and i intend on creating an android version first.
Lastly I would like to re-echo my gratitude to Bitnob for providing me this platform, as it presented me the opportunity to learn an entirely new programming language (Java) and also perfect my skills in backend development.
BitHub timeline
Chat with other Bittnobbers
Bitnob freelancer displaying his services for hire
Meet the team responsible for making this project
At the moment it's not possible to fund account using the Bitnob API and i think the manual process of going to the Bitnob app is a little time consuming; i would like to plead with Bitnob to make this functionality available through their API
Due to the limited time and nature of the Hackerthon which states we create an MVP here is what i intend on adding later
- Livecast (This feature has been added but we cannot confirm if it works)
- Users can create both private and public chat groups
- Make project cross platform (IOS & Web Version)
- Add ability to comments on post
- Add video and voice call to chats
- Design a professional logo
Download the android version Here