Cardano’s innovation engine, Project Catalyst, has launched the Ariob business incubator scheme in a partnership with the Ethiopian pan-African innovation hub, Ice Addis. With a name translating to ‘a collection of stars’, the Ariob incubator hopes to give start-ups access to venture-building expertise and resources to help develop products that will shine across Africa while solving real-life challenges.
This is the most recent of efforts by the Cardano developer, Input-Output Global (IOG), with previous projects including cooperation with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education to validate students’ academic credentials using technology built on Cardano. IOG is also collaborating with World Mobile in Zanzibar to use blockchain technology to enable disconnected connectivity and access to key online services.
Details on these projects are available here.
How It Works.
The Ariob incubator serves as a new tool to develop innovations and ecosystems driven by Cardano using the resources provided by one of the largest decentralized innovation funds in Project Catalyst.
The Ariob incubator program is set to offer services aimed at realizing creative potential, testing ideas, and using prototypes to find the best product using Cardano to create solutions to real-life challenges in Africa.
With each funding round, the community presents challenges across a range of subjects related to Cardano. These challenges are then answered by the community who present project proposals defining solutions and clear plans. The community then votes on the proposals presented and selects projects to receive funding. The Ariob Incubator program intends to evolve these proposals into the most competitive Africa-centered Catalyst startups.
In a release from Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, it was stated that the Ariob incubator is expected to accelerate the growth of the Cardano ecosystem while harnessing the potential of Africa’s 1.3 billion population to deliver cutting edge programs for the continent.
Project Catalyst Incubator for Africa.
The diversity of this 1.3 billion population opens up many possible fields of application for technological advancements and this is why Africa is seeing a huge acceleration in adopting new technologies such as blockchain. The fact that the older (and in some cases outdated) systems had a hard time reaching Africa also makes it far easier for such technological advances to take hold.
This further aligns with Cardano development company, IOHK’s RealFi (Real Financing) initiative. RealFi aims at providing new ways to extend financial services to those who need them the most. The Ariob environment provides education, mentorship and collaborative opportunities on top of the funding to enable people to realize and implement their entrepreneurship and innovative ideas from a fertile ground with the potential to transform both industry and society.
With the Ariob Incubator open to all Africa-focused businesses, projects joining include CheCha, a digital USD voucher system from Zimbabwe, Thrift Finance, a decentralized thrift savings system governed by THRIFT token holders, DirectEd, which is developing solutions to facilitate scholarships for students in low-income countries and Waya Collective, a decentralized autonomous network of product and service entreprises.
IOHK Director of African Operations, John O’Connor, announced the first round of loans to Kenyan SMEs, emphasizing Cardano’s RealFi’s future potential. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson announced that the business wants to offer peer-to-peer (P2P) financing across Africa this year, beginning in Kenya. This is seen as part of a larger attempt to close the gap between developed and developing nations.