Oh, wow. Thank you so much, Josh, for this opportunity. It is quite interesting how we met. We met, I think just about two weeks to the end of Zuzalo, during the coordination, I mean, I was privileged to be a part of that, I mean, closed group. And I think we had a trust conversation listening to your, your story, your presentation about Rejuva Rejuva Rejuva Rejuvara, one of one of the platform of places in, in, I think in, this country, Syria, it got me thinking. And that what brought me thinking about, the impetus, communism. And so, yeah, basically, my name's Eric. I'm a Ghanaian. I'm a third people. I'm Ghanaian by vets. I'm African by identity. I've lived and grown in Africa. Have a tribute traveling across African countries. I work in in in a global company called Huawei, briefly, and I exited to be and to start, building, startup because I I believe that my continent need to liberate technology to leapfrog, be able to accelerate development in terms of man human development because my continent is a very young continent, and is going to be the youngest even more younger as time comes, and we're gonna have by the end of the century, for example, every five, five people you meet, three of them will be someone like me, black person in a by the end of the century. So there's a need for us to kind of, speed up our adoption of technology and empowering our young people to have transferable skill because that's where the center of attraction is going to be not more about the physical infrastructure that we believe we should have, like we have in China, in The US, or in Canada, or in Europe. I believe that the next phase of human development, societal development is going to be people. So this got us me. I'm optimist. I'm very, a believer of long term. I'm a visionary. I wake up every day thinking of what next? Why shouldn't we do this? So it's not I I don't wake up believing that I should be entitled to things that I've not worked for. I believe in meritocracy. I'm a very strong believer of meritocracy. I'm a strong believer of honesty. I'm a strong believer. So if you think about it, then think of the Singapore pillar, the pillars of Singapore, which builds on four key pillars, meritocracy, pragmatism, and honesty, but you call it Miles per hour. I'm a strong advocate for that and I think it's something that if I have opportunity one day to lead any country in Africa, I will I will I will be using those pillars because we need to really, really, really, really, build society that have a strong moral quotient, strong moral quotient. I mean, rather than we don't care how you do it, all we care is that there are results. So everybody's clamoring for those who have money. I think that money should be something that really drive us to make me part of life, the lives of people. So basically, that's all about me and happy to meet you in Zuzalo. It was fun. Yeah.

Yeah. So Zuzalo was an interesting one. Right? So I happened to be in Zuzalo by by pace of happenstance. And so I I I always tell people that I don't believe in accidents. Right? I don't believe in coincidence. So last year, when we we started Aya, our mission was very simple to unlock opportunity for African talent. We had opportunity to get an investor from from China, who has understand of the African context, and he invest he was actually the growth of one of our first check. He was the second person who invested in us. So he introduced me to one amazing Chinese lady who lives in in The US and worked with consensus. I mean, I'll mention her name. She's her name is Shiel. And so Jerry introduced us to Shiel, and we got onto onto Telegram. We had a chat. She's like, wow. You have a lot of insights about this. I'll I just like your project. So early this year, January, I was definitely sent a message. Hey, Eric. Would you mind to be part of something that Vitalik is planning to have? Is caused to Zalo. It's going to happen in Montenegro from twenty fifth March to the May 25 as a pop up city, and we do want to in fact, he's much interested to have some, startup founders from Africa. And I talk about you. Would you want to go I mean, attend. I said, why not? I'm I'm always about why not? So that's how I got to even hear about Zuzalo. So through Jerry, I got to meet I mean, know getting to know about Zuzalo immediately thought about me. So just a minute, Josh, just a minute for a moment. I didn't know this lady. Sure. There's no way I was supposed to be part of Zuzalo. Right? So this was all about having the right network of people and being very consistent, being honest. And we had a call, and then she introduced me to, Nicole, who happened to be one of the organizers of Zuzalo. And then Nicole, wow. You have to be here. And she connected me to Vitalik, and Vitalik visited Ghana in February. I met Vitalik in Ghana, and that's how I got to Zuzalo. Unfortunately, a lot of people that were invited from Africa couldn't attend it because it couldn't access the visa to attend. I happen to be able to go there because I have just got my US visa. My for the first time, I just got my US o one visa. Mhmm. So the o one visa, I mean, took me to The US to complete our text task. So our my my startup has already been accepted into Texas, Boston. So I was going to The US to complete the program. And after the program, I now, flew to, Zuzalo on the March 11, on the April 11, sorry, to to be part of the Zuzalo, experience. And it's been really, really something I will never forget the experience. So going to Zuzalo for me, I had only two goals. The goal was very simple. Learn as much as I can learn from the best of my imagination staying in one place with Vitalik for for thirty days. Just imagine that. As an African founder, it's not a privilege I found myself having, but it's also a real time opportunity to see how can how much can I can accumulate in terms of knowledge to bring it back to my continent and be, I mean, implement it? I mean, imagine being in the same place with the cofounder of optimism, Ben Jones. Imagine being in the same, apartment with the cofounder, a global, Liam. Imagine being in the same room with the cofounder of Bitcoin, and their lives. It gives you opportunity to ask the right questions. It gives you opportunity to be vulnerable, to to learn. And so I go up in Zuzalo was not go there and and then be pitching everybody, selling that, and I I didn't try to sell. I I thought I I didn't sell. This was for me that it's an opportunity that I would have had, and therefore, how do I contribute value? So how do I contribute value to Zuzalo? How do I I mean, how much can I learn from great mind that I've gathered there? And I tell you the experience still live with me. I'm trying to even suppress myself aside that I don't push all the knowledge I have accumulated from Zuzalo to, people. So when I'm speaking to a lot of people, I try to kind of calm down because if I don't take it, I will even confuse people because there's so much I accumulated in two months that I've not even, I mean, explored 1% of it. And even the list that I've shared, I've seen the result of it. Mhmm. If for example, in two months since this, one of the surprising thing I I discovered was, a hack, a group hack that I I I learned. Just imagine in two months, Jesse, the the lady that did the hackathon, did over 75,000,000,000,000 in two months. Look, Africa had the youngest younger population that are curious to do this. But we didn't even understand that it's it's one thing to have the skill, but it's another thing to apply the skill. So that's one of the key secret I learned in Zuzalo. And since I came, we changed the entire approach of Aya. And even sharing it with the other founders that look, if we don't begin to let our young people hack, continue to build on their skill, it will be difficult for them to actually have global opportunities and be part of Ethereum. I mean, I'm a contributor, be part of Coinbase, be part of optimism, be part of Bitcoin, and all these amazing protocols out there. It's all brought down to hacking. And guess what? In just less than a month, one of my our our alumni who went through our training has already won a, I mean, hackathon in Polycom lab. Just imagine, and it was $7,000 because of the thinking that, look, it's about hacking. You need to consider to build. So that is one of the amazing experience I've had. Bright bringing that, an ideology of hacking, build that mindset has changed a lot for us. And I am not for only I have, but other counterpart that we have at I mean, partners that we have, for example, like, we have three bridge guys. We just established Ghana Blocking Association of Ghana. It has never been done. We just set up Blockchain Association of Ghana. And the Blockchain Association of Ghana, helping young people acquire the skill and the tool that can be able to build, you know, basic we need to have more innovators in Africa so that we can be able to use the the technology to for the good of humanity, because we need the blockchain more than any other person may think of. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, Yegi, for this question. So I think one of the major thing people, brought over when it come to crypto, like it is said, so people have this misconception that blockchain is crypto. Largely, the reason being that earlier on, between 02/1819, a lot of this crypto projects end up to be very fraud. Right? Yeah. And a lot of Africans who got into it really got burned. I got burned several. I I lost a ton of my savings Wow. Through crypto scams. But once that kept me going was that I knew number one, that innovations take time to settle. And I knew the more I got to know about crypto and blockchain, I read that, look, this is a solution that is going to help us solve three critical challenges. Number one is Africa is a 54 countries. It's not Africa is not a country. It's 54 countries, and it's a vast land, a land of plenty, abundance. We have 1,400,000,000 people, the same people we have in China. But what is working for China is that China is largely homogeneous. Largely, I'm not saying it's very rigid, but largely, China is a kind of a homogeneous setup. So you have China, the yuan, and you can answer them, everybody without thinking about different currency. We go to The US, you have the dollar, and the all the states use the dollar, one market. So if you're an entrepreneur in in The US, you do not have to think about other currencies. You think about the US dollar. But in Africa, for example, if I'm in Ghana, for example, I cannot easily transact with somebody who is my neighbor in Togo, which is about four hours drive, four, six hours drive. I cannot do the same thing with my neighbor in Nigeria, who is just about an hour flight from Accra to Lagos. So that challenge of payment, and we have, the economy that is largely driven by foreign economies, I mean, policies. So Africa is driven by dollar, the euro and other thing. So what that crypto has done for us, especially the stable coin, is enabling us unlock the layer of payments. So today I can use stable coin, which was not possible 10 ago, If I'm there to send even even $10 to somebody in Kenya, and it it it doesn't go through, hit a a US account before it come back to Kenya. Today, this still has changed. With crypto, I'm able to send within a second, and the person receives it indirectly. Number two, enabling us to unlock trade among Africa. And so what people don't know about the the West, they don't know a lot about Africa when it comes to crypto is that they think that crypto is a is a trading or crypto just an investment tool. Just as they know of in The US. People because people use crypto in The US just for investment, ETF, speculation. It's not really solving a payment issue. But in Africa, crypto is not an investment tool. It is a payment wheel. It's helping us connect 54 countries together. It's helped us connect 1,400,000,000 people to trade among themselves. Similarly, that was never made possible in the last 10¢, I mean, decade ago, but now it's possible. And that's one thing that people are lacking, comparing Africa use cases to the West use cases, because crypto is not really solved any problem in the West, the global North. Crypto is solved a major, major problem in the global South because most part in Africa, APA and other financial tools don't work. You cannot even assess them. And so people now able to have financial record, financial history, able to participate in the global economy through crypto. And therefore, the use cases are parallel. They are not the same. And therefore, there's a more need for crypto in Africa more than you think of in the West. Unfortunately, because the technology likely is being and we have a lot more funding from the West, they dictate how crypto should be used in Africa. And that's what the kind of imbalance we have. Because all these protocols are not from Africa. All these protocols are either from The Asia or from The US or from Europe. And therefore the same philosophy of capitalism is still driving the use of crypto, this technology that supposedly supposed to kind of connect the world together is a decentralized, is freedom, is permissionless. Unfortunately, because we still see it as a way to make money, we are still being driven by the same philosophy the Western world has used in the last one century or so. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll be very, very direct on this one. Right? I think we use a a template for over hundred years, And that time that template today is obsolete, totally obsolete, is no more working. In fact, if the world is to pay attention, COVID taught us one thing. COVID taught us one thing that we are all connected by virtue of all of our being vulnerable. And therefore, I think it's time that the worst begin to kind of update their system. Right? So talking about, for example, the borders we have, it should not be difficult for Africans ourselves, for example, to solve, to say, look, we have used these borders for over a hundred years. It's actually not helping our own people. Just by wealth and order, we have African Union. Let's remove all this border. We don't need UN to be ready to give us I mean, the go ahead. We don't need America's CIA or whatever or whoever in America to give us to say, look, we're Africans. We no more borders. Anybody can travel across Africa. That's number one. We need to solve that problem for ourselves. That political thing, we know I know it's political. I know Africa is not connected. Africa is still united because France has its own interest in Africa. America has its own interest in Africa. Today, we have the the the the Eastern Block, China, Russia. They also, I mean, building a strong interest in Africa. Now the point is Europe concerns have their own interest in Africa. Everybody have a plan for Africa, but only Africa don't have a plan for Africa. Yeah. Yeah. That's a alright. Is it everybody else have a plan for Africa except Africans having a plan for Africa. And we we we wake up and then we're crying. Oh, Africa's we need we need repatriation, we need this. Look, I've come to one conclusion. That we don't need to continue to cry for the wrongs of the past. We should be very wise to say, look, for the interest of the young people of this continent, we are going to do ABCD. Number one is removing all these artificial borders in Africa. And we don't need UN to do this. We have to solve that one first. Now on the second part of it, the worst thing that they are doing this thing, they're content to use old mentality of the oath, divide and rule. I mean, game theory to depress Africa, to suppress Africa. Look. You're not suppressing Africa for no in fact, as of today, I know that whatever the I mean, it's happened today, everyone's going to suffer for it. Because whether we like it or not, the the population of the West is declining. Right? It's declining. And they can't do anything about it because that's how the society become. Africa is the the last and the largest opportunity the West has. And therefore and the youngest continent, the only thing we can do to ourself is a win win. This one is I'm going for free. It's a win win. Look, the worst will benefit more. The worst, there is, everybody else will benefit more if they liberalize their obsolete cake immigration policies. It doesn't make sense for example, a young African who did not ask God or the creator to bring to Africa, talented, smart, and being restricted because his leadership, his political leadership has failed to create economic opportunity for him to travel. With blockchain technology today, mobility should be a a a matter of human rights. I should be able to travel based on my personal record. Instead of spending billions of dollars to combat crime, why should we reward good behavior? For example, and what do I mean by good behavior? Good behavior in the sense that today, everything that you want from me, Josh, by the stroke of the internet, you can find everything I have done in the last ten years. Why should we begin to think, okay, are Eric going to travel to, to Spain? What has Eric done in this in the last ten years? We match it both positive and negative, and if the negative, I mean, negative, I mean, outweigh the positive, this guy does not offer to come here. It shouldn't be based on my passport. I think that what if you reward good behavior, the world will save more money and you can turn it those money that we used to kind of come back crying. Because people everybody was, okay. I need to put up a good behavior to be able to travel. Because now travel is not based on my passport. Travel is based on my good, good behavior, my talent I have, my skills I have, the value I can create, and therefore, anybody, anyone should be able to move freely. If freedom of movement enable us to create more opportunities, more be be more productive. And I I I say, the people that are going to build the next the world that we have today is going to be young Africans. And if for if you deny them access to travel, to kind of connect with our people, I don't need to stay in America for my entire life. I just wanna be in America for two days, maybe one month, two months, meet Josh, go go to Spain, meet Josh, I mean, exchange knowledge and come back and and implement in my content. In fact, I have a lot of young people who says I don't want to go to America. I just want to go for vacation, understand their system, come back and implement. Now that's how the world is going. And, therefore, I I think that the political issue, we Africans have to solve Africa. We need to have a plan for our own continent because everybody else have a plan for Africa, except Africans have the plan for Africa. And the more we do this, the more we we kind of incentivize the West to continue to use old system to suppress the continent. But the moment you say, look, nobody need visa to travel across Africa. The worst begin to change their their own own plan because if you don't, it don't solve, it's trying to become home. If you are not doing this, you don't expect America to change their their traffic policy. Don't expect UK to change their because you yourself, you're still using the system that they gave you. They know that it's still working for you and you're still holding on to it and then creating division, making your people struggle because you think that that's the only way to protect your people. Nobody's protecting nobody because at the end of the day, when there's a massive unemployment in Africa because the content is growing at an alarming rate, not only will affect Africans, but it also affect the planning of UN. It also affect the plan of America. It also affect the plan of you. And therefore, who's who win? Everybody loses. And therefore, I think I put to the world that look, let's begin to rework our old policies and then begin to look at how can we solve the problem of access? How can we help young people access or grow opportunities, have access to information that will help them improve their livelihood and be able to create economy, economy need. I don't I'm not interested in the gold, oil thing. I think the technology is here to help everybody, and African young people are more than happy to work in Africa for global company without even a need for them to travel as after the continental. We want to eat our food. We want to enjoy our our fruits. All we need that we need access to global opportunities while staying in Africa so we can able to contribute the global economy and the Internet economy. I believe that's the way to go in the future.

Absolutely blockchain, crypto is one key technological. You know why it's so essential and why I'm so passionate about blockchain. Of all the innovation that I've seen have come, the early days of the Internet, the second phase of the Internet, social media, everything everything was centralized, come off. But the blockchain and the future of the Internet is looking like more of a decentralized, of, tools. And it has more of no permission. You don't need nobody owned the patent. And that we provide that an opportunity to kind of leapfrog a lot of the processes. And one thing that all the innovation that we have seen never did was the issue of ability to have a decentralized form of payments and blockchain provide us that. And that's why I think, I believe blockchain, crypto provide us a unique opportunity to redefine our economic structure in Africa. For example, we are able to with the blockchain, we can tokenize all our assets. Africa controls 65% of the global supply chain in terms of raw materials. Why shouldn't we tokenize gold in Ghana and then mobilize the capital and then we might have put ourselves, refine it and sell the the end product? Why shouldn't we tokenize cobalt in in DRC? Said that we can mobilize the capital needed so that we can mine the cobalt in Africa, bring all the equipment, and bring the expertise in Africa, mine it, and sell to Apple, sell to Tesla. Instead of just mining the aromather, taking out there, and then selling us Apple phone for thousand $500, Tesla, and then we just get, I mean, a portion of it. Actually, the blockchain provide a unique opportunity for Africa to create real value, not the content that just have $4,000,000,000,000 GDP. At least to China, $19.10 dollar GDP. America, almost $20,000,000,000,000 GDP. Meanwhile, 65% of real value is in Africa. I believe blockchain provides that opportunity. And we don't need to wait for IMF or what bank to say, oh, the way to go is blockchain before Africans, leadership in Africa, policy makers in Africa begin to see the technology as a way to kind of create a new economic incentive, a new opportunity for young people to be innovators to create this solution for us. We understand our continent. We understand our precarious problem that we have, and we can actually solve this problem through collaboration. And I'm not saying that it should be African affair. I'm saying that we believe that the future is our collaboration. I believe the future is collaboration between the West and the and the East, everybody. Because it's not about you must lose and we must win. I don't believe in that. I believe that the future of the world, the sanctity of this world that we have today is about collaboration. And Africa is the last continent to actually make use, good use of its resources that we have had. It had destroyed it for years. Still, we still have a lot. Even not not that. The need phase is that how do we collaborate to ensure that value is created, value is created, really excluded, and accumulated in Africa. Side that the people of Africa can also enjoy economic livelihood. The issue bothered economics. It's not policy. In fact, the policy is less. Until you saw the economic matters, the political issues will continue to be like the bigger thing. When China saw that, China got got got that secret fifty years ago, and they decided to saw the economic matters before political. Now they are now fighting the political to actually have a position. They didn't actually start with the political. They started with the economics. And I think that Africa, we added wrong by fighting for economic freedom. Instead, we shall fought for economic freedom first. Then when we have enough, we cannot begin to assess our economic, strength and strengths. But now we fought for economic I mean, a political, now the economy is bad, and now we can't even our economy I mean, our political field of receiving in in question. Right? And I see that happening in Saudi Arabia. They have solved the economic power. They have the economic power now. They are now asserting as at other parts, softly asserting the authority politically. And that's why I think that we didn't get right. And I think that the future for Africa is to concentrate back to economic matters. It's the most important thing to solve in society, not politics.

Yes, I think so. One of the reasons why Nigeria has a lot of people using crypto is, naturally Nigerians are very entrepreneurial and only see something they really want to test it. And so you have a very dynamic young population in Nigeria, And they also have a few population in Nigeria, more than 200,000,000 people. And so they had some challenge with their currencies. I mean, your local currency cannot do more than $100 at a point. You cannot even transact more than $20 on your card. So therefore, the only opportunity they have, it was to use crypto, alright, as a means of payment, paying for their suppliers in China, is high heavily import driven society. So that was one The naira has like, heavy capital controls. Exactly. And so that was one of those factors. And there were a lot of, I mean, regulatory, impediments in the way of the central bank. So the last eight years, the reason why we have seen a lot of drive for crypto adoption in Nigeria was because people soon needed to transact. People still needed to be part of the global economy. They still needed to pay their school fee. They still needed to send money to their farm and friends and their local currency, car, bank, account. I'm not doing that, support that. And the only option was crypto. That's why I do just said, crypto go beyond trading. Crypto in Africa go beyond ETF or, speculation. Crypto in Africa is solving problem that has never been solved in the last hundred years. A crypto has helped a lot of Africans be part of the financial global financial system to be able to afford whatever they want to afford, to be able to pay for whatever because we are import driven largely. We put almost everything in Africa and the dollar cannot continue. We need to be so. The easier way to do is to use by local currency, buy USDT on a peer to peer network and able to do the next part with anybody in the world. So that's one of the key drivers. And on top of that, Nigeria has a huge young people with a skill. And therefore most of this blockchain project were being built by Nigerian parents. And so it's just so far to say, it's important for this blockchain foundations and protocols to really redeploy a lot more resources into the content that is really kind of expanding their reach in terms of utility, in terms of usability and in terms of adoption, Africa has proven to be the real use case for crypto and blockchain. Why shouldn't there be enough commensurate risk I mean, response in terms of investment, in in terms of support, in terms of deploying events? Why shouldn't there be, for example, it global in in Africa? Why shouldn't it, for example, there be I mean, DevCom in Africa? What should there be, DevConnect in Africa? Why shouldn't there be, for example, consensus in Africa? Because, for example, MetaMask has one of their biggest markets in Africa, which is Nigeria. So if all these things are true, then it's not, it should not be so much to us that we need to see your presence. People, young people need to see, I mean, lives of metallic on the continent more often. People need to see consensus, people behind consensus, people behind metamask, people behind just right to ask that, look, we want to see people behind this. So it will inspire more young people to say, look, we can also do it. For me, that's how I see it, because if I'm giving you enough for your, I mean, for your product, why shouldn't that why should there be difficulty to really bring those incentives down here to the a place where it is really retesting the usability, the utility, and the adoption of that technology.

Yeah. Thank you so much for this. So, where we start Aya is I've been an entrepreneur. My first startup that we're told to build, we're told to solve the issue of payment in Africa. So our startup would solve issue of payment, would be the wallet that enable people to send money from one part to the other. It didn't work so well. And one of the lesson that we learned was that, look, why shouldn't you look at crypto from the different points? In fact, the builders of crypto or blockchain engineers in the world, Africa just have about 3% of the total builders in the world. So I and my team decided that, look, we need to do something about this. We saw crypto from a one point of view just to use for payments, but what about we empowering the young people with the skill they need, become solidity engineers, ROS engineers, smart contract engineers, product designer, product builders, so that they can actually build solution that can actually solve problem in Africa. Because my research, I mean, I I found out that a lot of this project are being built without the context of Africa. So for example, you have a lot of people still using phones that are not smartphones. Right? And therefore, if you build a a a wallet that do not communicate to a non smartphone user, how would you get adoption? And that's what I came to be. And large again, we have a lot of talent who have skill, but they can't assess jobs. In fact, in Africa, a survivor, you have to survive first. You have to you have not solved the issue of food, clothing, shelter, and therefore, every person who finished school, you have the, I mean, the responsibility to get a job and take care of your siblings if you have and take care of your your your parents. That's the major crops to have. Right? Unlike the West where young people finish school, at least you have some social safe nets. We have food bank in The US. If you don't have food, you can go to food bank and get food to eat. In Africa, we don't have that. So a lot of young people are going through a lot of challenges, but their skills sometimes is not also up to up to scale to enable them to do. Not even they have skill, you don't even have access to this opportunity because they they don't have a trust from the West to say, oh, I can actually hire this person to do this. And fortunately for us, COVID has actually redemocratized work, how work should be. Therefore, people don't now need to work remotely. And the how do we scale remote work is for us to focus on web three, because we know that web three, everybody in web two is moving to a three. So how do we be become that player for to to become that pioneer in Africa to train at least our goal is to train 10,000 talent in Africa in the next five years to have smart contract capability, able to build smart contract, I mean, products, be able to build designers, and that's the goal I is having. Not only to train them, but interestingly, we train and then we enable them to be hackers, builders, to continue to hack on product so they can be efficient, they can be smart, and be able to connect them to global opportunities. And that's the way for us. We believe crypto will have mass adoption because now we always solve the payment issue. We now need to think about the talent issue because if you don't have enough digital skill talent in Africa, it will be difficult for us to go to a next layer of the technology. And it's also difficult to onboard a billion people if, I mean, if not billion people, millions of people on this technology because it is really solving our own problem. And that's basically what Aya is trying to solve. And interestingly, we've seen some great successes so far. We've trained 66 people. Went to just three 50. We have 4,000 application last year. We trained 66. Already, some of them have started winning hackathons with Polygon Labs and Celo, across across the world, which give us an incentive to even dig deeper. And the reason why we have started doing, we just launched a a a a challenge in a higher or higher lab where we we throw our challenges for people to build solution and we give them some incentive just for them to build. The goal is to build a massive developer community in Africa. And there's another one called Hackit Ghana, for example, just started Hackit Ghana. The goal is to go to all the universities in Ghana, build clubs, build Ethereum club, coin based club, Polycom club, citizen club, and among the students for them to have these challenges every day. So by the time they finish school, they already have practical experience to actually work on real project. And that's the mission of Aya. For us, it's all about empowering Africa, connecting African talent to the world for them to come build us and to support the growth of with trade and crypto adoption and build a product that really, really solve African problem and exploit the global,

Yeah, do you need people the tool? I mean, instead of giving us fish, I think that we need to have the tools to be able to solve our own puzzle, you just summarize it. I mean, you are not saving us. The technology is good. I mean, it's a global technology, everybody can use it. But now we're saying that, look, we can actually use the same technology and solve problems locally that can actually bring more people into the mainstream. And at the end of the day, it's a win win, right? And so teaching people to be, I mean, I mean, the others, put me a tool on their hand to actually create the solution that they believe that will solve local problem. Because if you don't understand a society, you can actually solve their problem for them. And how do you bring this tool to the hands of a lot of young people in the continent who are already young, agile, very resilient and empower them with this tool to solve problems that ultimately increases the protocol adoption. Ultimately, look, it's a win win. These guys are building that on the on the on Ethereum, on Polygon, on Optimism is increasing the the the network adoption ultimately. So it's not like, oh, if you empower African talent, they are going to take the technology away. No. It's it's it's it's a win win. Therefore, we need to see that way. The more you empower people to have the tool on their hand to build, the more the protocol owners also benefit from it. So it's a kind of a win win. That's why I'm excited. Unlike the previous where it centralized, whatever you do, nobody care about you. This one, I need a tool, I'm building. I know you're going to benefit. I also know I'm so beneficial. I'm used to solve problem in my local setting. So it's kind of a beautiful future that I foresee us kind of collaborating more with this protocol, global protocol owners, but the focus should kind of change a bit instead of staying there and then we don't care about what's happening here. Meanwhile, people are really using the technology down here. How do we change that and then bring it closer to the people?

Yeah, I think I'll be very honest with you. I think that when you want to get your self organized, the goal initially is not to fight for everything. I believe in that. I think that we have everything on our side to prove that we can do it. That's why I talk about trust. Number one, trust. Number two, I haven't accessed the right network of people to really give you opportunity to show proof of work. Number three is now we have gotten it. Now we are proving that we can do it. Now can we talk about fair exchange, right? So our first ten year goal is not to say, hey, because you're paying somebody in The US $120,000 or $250,000 for the same kind of work, pay somebody nothing that they say because look. Let's be honest with that, sir. The economic situation, the standard of I mean, living the cost of living is different in different geographical areas. Right? So it will cost you somebody in the in New York about $4,000 to to rent a studio apartment. It may not cost you the same to to rent a student apartment in Accra. So those things, I know it's a global thing, but for now, the first leg of our our our mission is to get more young people to have the skill. After they have the skill, the next thing is that to open open them up to this opportunity for them to build, solve these problems in real time so that they can become efficient. When they become efficient, they need to be innovators and build projects. The next layer is to unlock capital for them. And unlock capital for them means that they can now be able to employ people locally who have the skill and they will not be a challenge of finding the right talent to help you scale your innovation or your startup. That will be solved locally. And therefore, the next thing is that they can scale in Ghana, anywhere in Africa and still work with global companies. The goal is helping the global companies save cost and have access to quality talent outside their their their geographical locations. In terms of fair wages or thing is something that I think it took Indians more than thirty years for them to become what they are today. Now what they did was that, look, don't worry. Bring a meeting to India. We'll help you solve it. And the whole tech move to India, our source to India. And they didn't fight for fair wage. They just wanted to show the world that we can do it. And Indians have not achieved optimum. They have actually achieved global scale. Africa has not done this at that scale. We are seeing that we have one of the most resilient and active young population that actually are eager to work and just get able to solve the three basic need, food, shelter, clothing. Let's solve this thing first. Other parts will come in the future, maybe twenty years from now, thirty years from now, after we have dead and gone, then we have achieved skill. At that point, people cannot begin to ask for, look, now we need I mean, more more more more more remuneration, better the same standard we have in China. Now we have built economy that is scalable. System are working, and we don't need to talk to India no more or China no more or in America. They are staying in Africa. The economy is robust. I mean, because of living has increased and therefore they need to have better remuneration. At this stage, we need to solve the basics first. Food, shelter, clothing and access. While we have access, I think is enough for us not to, I mean, for us not to call for aid, not to call for anybody, give us aid. Africa don't need aid. African investment in the young people. The aid is not working, it's never going to work. The top down approach is not ever going to work. Let's now begin to do bottom up. Let's empower the young people. If you empower the young people, what it does two things. They are not going to cross the Mediterranean Sea to die. Therefore, now you cannot set up an NGO or let's now solve the issue of the Mediterranean cross, but we don't need that. Let's solve the problem now so that nobody will travel through the Mediterranean Sea. Because when they have food, they have shelter, they have clothing, they're not thinking about traveling out of the continent. They are thinking about how do I have skill to be able to support global companies working for them remotely.

It's very simple. Right? So Africa is largely a communal society. Africa is largely more like community oriented. That has been our our DNA. Right? Africa is small. You are because I am. It's we are together. So I'll give example. So for example, if an African man, typical African man buys a gun, Josh, his first instinct is not to say, hey, you are my property. Get out of it. I'll shoot you. When an African man has a gun, for example, his instinct is to protect his neighbors. The only time you want to use the gun against his is when the community rise against him. But the reverse is true. In the West, if I have a gun, Josh, and I step on your on your land, the next day tells me, hey, get out of here. I'll shoot you. And indeed, you're gonna shoot me because there's zero empathy. Everything is calculated as numbers. Right? It is quantified. We don't have that compassion of one another. Africa has practiced in Butu for centuries. It's unfortunate that it's largely wiping out of our society. But I brought it up in the conversation because I realized that we're we're having a conversation that is seeking to kind of solve a non existing problem. And therefore, if you have some non existing problem, you're only saying that you are coming with and the same people and saying that everything's fine, forget everything, and let's see how we can continue to enjoy our privileges. But what Ubuntu does for the world is that we begin to look at the world from a bigger perspective, from a point of kindness, through humanity, put the human at the center because whether we like it or not, innovations are good, technologies are good, but not technology can work with that compassion to the human being. And therefore, I ask I breathe out and I'm asked the question, can we build a new world? Talk about network state, coordination, network cities, and using technology of all these things and still do not solve basic things like mobility, food, shelter, clothing. If you're not talking about these things and we are thinking, oh, the worst, we have gotten to a point where we need to rethink everything through a concept of capitalism, then I'm thinking that we are actually not reflecting. And that's why in both is key because you are because I am, and I am because you are. Human beings, we have evolved. The only thing that is true about human humanity is that humans are not status. Our story keep on getting better. Our ideology is getting better. But once that we are failing to do is that we are failing to be compassionate about the atrocity that we have we have caused to this world to humanity. And if you don't do this about it, by beginning to look at it from togetherness, community, there's high rate of mental health, high rate of depression because it's individualism. The worst is is individualism is Yeah. Individual basis. As African, despite all the pains Africans go through, Josh, we don't wake up seeing mass depression, mass, mental health cases because we are resilient, because we are in Buto. You are because I am, and I am because you are. And I think we can scale this. We can explore this to the global world. Everybody need somebody. We all need each other. See, we don't need all this all this thing that we have created to the world as it creates a division. And that's why the commencing of Imbuto is an old primary DNA of a typical African society that has been erased over the years. But going back to history because, I love what Sibiu said. He said, you cannot create the future without quality to the past. You mirror the past, bring to the present, and able to kind of gauge the future. And I'm saying that we can actually mirror the past and see how can we use technology to create an in Buddhism where the human is at the center, everything's at the center. And at the end of the day, everybody wins. You can still make money, so much money. I'm not saying capitalist number. I'm a capitalist. But my kind of capitalism is the capitalism of empathy. I don't want to make I mean, I'm a conscious capitalist capitalist. I don't want to make money at the expense of somebody's blood. I don't want to make money because I talk because I need to make money. I think that we can still make money by we can still be morally upright and still be create abundance. I still believe that we can still be consciously right and still make so much money. I don't believe that I need to make money, so to be some of these down to make money. And therefore the current current structure we have, I think is is is is working okay, but we need to talk about it. And that's why the communism in Voto is so critical in our conversation. Else, we are going to have something that we cannot all quote. I may be dead and gone, I see it as a danger in the future where individualism will make the society just wipe off, but Africa will still maintain. And for us, because I will know that we are very empathetic, we are very sympathetic, we are very compassionate. Why shouldn't we have this kind of conversation so that we can make people aware and then change that. It's not right for people to be depressed. It's not right for people to go through mental because they are in their alone. After 18, go away. You are done. I don't I don't talk about you. Families are turning out their children because you're 18 years. Go and find your own way. No. That's not how society should work. It's about us. Together, we win. Together, we can make more. Together, we can create a new reality for humanity to exist. Together, exist and co exist and co multiply and co create and co share and make everybody happy.

Oh, thank you so much, Josh, for this opportunity. It's just a conversation. If I didn't have to sit down and plan, but I was I was going to say, but I just wanted to have real real conversation from my heart. And I I I I hope I I was able to share a bit of what I believe the world should look like in a couple of years ahead of us. I'm very on online. My name is Eric Anand. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Twitter as e underscore Anand twenty four. And, of course, we are on a we are building a movement in Africa for Aya. Aya is empowering young Africans to be creators. And so our tagline is empowering Africa, transforming the world. Join us. Let's make a difference. Join us. Let's change the narrative where people want to travel out of Africa. We call it believe opportunities are outside. We want people to stay in Africa and support the world. We call it brain export. Join us on our mission to create a new reality where we export brain, not brain drain. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks so much.