So this is a 2,000 nation in bill. If I wanna digitize this, I'll lose almost 20% of this Wow. By just moving it to my phone. Kids that grow up playing Call of Duty, playing right here on FIFA, like, being on TikTok, they're gonna be the middle class, and they're gonna be aware of the digital economy. Being Being from Tanzania, I think I see a lot of problems that need technological innovation, and I think technology can really blend so well with community, but the infrastructure is still, I see, at 1% built in terms of even payments and also just getting people online, not even on chain, online to begin with. But what changes was the currency, was the utility around what you can do with it. If I can exchange it for something else or buy with something else, that's what it might. That's what gives something the currency. So if you can do the same for tokens and say, like, hey. I'm gonna disallow this token to be spent in this community, then you start creating this circular economy around that area. And this is because the economy is not designed for you to spend where you're from. It's designed for you to get out and earn money and spend it outside your community. I think people should get paid when they spend. Like, every time I spend my money, I should earn instead of losing.

Hey. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. This is quite an honor. My name is Victor Mogache from Tanzania, East Africa. If you've never been to this side of the world, I welcome you. It's quite a beautiful place to be part of. Yeah. I'm a cofounder and a builder based in East Africa. Been building in the web three space for, I'll say, six to seven years now. Called the crypto bug early on after, I would say, just being exposed with my friend David, who's also my cofounder. He's really heavy into contributing in different DAOs, and we started at Prime DAO and just writing research and just, you know, getting curious about technology. We really started the journey of building tech back in 2018. I've been passionate about building products. My background is in finance. I studied economics when I was in uni and, like, during my schooling year. And then from that, I really just was trying to be an entrepreneur. So build a music streaming platform, had a lot of learnings from there because at the time, it was just the excitement of just being a founder and building startups. But then when I met David, he introduced me to crypto and his whole new infrastructure around blockchain. And from there, we founded Middle Labs and has been the anchor point around all this. Being from Tanzania, I think I see a lot of problems that need technological innovation, and I think technology can really blend so well with community, but the infrastructure is still, I say, at 1% built in terms of even payments and also just getting people online, not even on chain, online to begin with. So we find this quite an exciting challenge to kinda be part of, and we see it as a long term vision. And, Miller Labs, our mission is to say, hey. Can we not only get people on board, but if build infrastructure that lasts, but it's also adaptable And also looks ahead like, okay. We're not building something that's a silo, but something that can be interoperable that other system can join and people can find value in it. And I think blockchain is the closest thing to kinda achieving this. And I'm super excited to, you know, always meet new people in the space, the community aspect of being in the web free space. And, yeah, meeting Joshua was quite exciting in what he's building at Stacks. I think it's really, really cool. And Brad as well, being around tokenization from deposit, from, like, ownership of, like, trust and how we can put that as a value as an asset. So I'm quite excited about all these things and how they kinda tie it all together. And, yeah, looking forward to this session and and sharing more about what we're doing out here. Yeah. So maybe just,

By the way, I I had a chance of checking out stats. So, guys, trust me. What Joshua is telling you, something you should look forward to. I think it's quite quite amazing. I like the ethos around what you guys are building, which is quite quite interesting. Now even in the context where I'm from. So from Tanzania, grew up to spend majority of my life in Tanzania. I would say it's it's a hidden gem in this place because we speak Swahili as a national language, so we won't find anybody speaking English. So there's always that barrier to begin with. But I won't call it a barrier necessary, but I would say an opportunity because that creates community that have one operating system because language is the operating system of the mind. But then now how do you build context around technology that kinda, like, embodies this? So then for us, what we're doing with Weshika Dao is kinda, like, creating and translating and abstracting a lot of the jargon and, what is under the hood to what is the functionality of tech. So as a Tanzanian growing up here, it was like, instead of changing or redefining the wheel, it's like, how do we make tech that adapts? So we have over, over, I would say, 30 to 40 regions around the country, divided into the Eastern, West, and central. The East Coast is where the Indian Ocean meets, the Tanzanian coast to shoreline. And as the further down you go, you have mainland, you have northern lands, and there's a variety of activities happening throughout the country. So you have businesses, you have people doing agriculture, doing, like, you know, I'll say middle class businesses, people doing tourism. There's a lot of industry happening in the country, but all of them rely on the same payment infrastructure and value infrastructure of, like, traditional banking in terms of how value moves, how business interact with one another. So this comes with a lot of architectural barriers, especially mobile money was a huge innovation that happened in Africa, popularized by Kenyans. It started in in East Africa. So Tanzania also, we have mobile money. So you find a lot of us have had experience of having wallets by just having a phone. So the moment you have a SIM card, you already have a wallet, and I can put money in it. So you can find we're quite ahead in that space, but then this comes riddled with a lot of infrastructure barriers where a lot of fees comes with it, and a lot of it comes with the context where you have agent networks that help you top up your mobile money. So most people will have cash. That's their cash is king in Africa. And I need to digitize this cash into a digital value equivalent, which will be mobile money. So I can top it up on my phone and then use it for everyday payments. But then this creates another barrier because now you realize I lose almost 20% to 15% just digitizing that Tanzanian. Now this is what's happening right now. If you have 10,000 thousand 8 shillings, I think it's it's quite funny whenever we talk about it. So this is a 2,008 shilling bill. If I wanna digitize this, I'll lose almost 20% of this Wow. By just moving it to my phone. And I think a lot of people complain about this, but when you do research, even for me when I started, I was like, wow. This is so unfair. But then the more you do research, it's like, there needs to be agent networks, physical hubs where you can you can take your cash and somebody will on ramp it for you physically, put it on your mobile phone. Now that process means there's a middleware. There's a network service. There's a company that allows this to happen. And then what that tends to happen, you rises the fee, then you find the same process costs you more. Now it happens when I wanna take it out, same thing. When I wanna send it, for example, if you're showing you in Tanzania, I wanna send you money, I will lose maybe 15%. They're trying to break this cost down, but then it's still quite a burden. Now this is the landscape at the moment. So you find the infrastructure is there, but it's not heavily utilized. It becomes a backbone because we rely on it, but it's inefficient in a sense. It takes more than it actually gives. So you find as a as an individual or a business owner, I'm losing a lot of money in just moving it from wallet to wallet, from buying things. So I'd rather have it in cash than actually move it. But then you realize, okay. What are the things that we're missing out on in terms of digitizing the economy? Because we're seeing the huge rise of, like, people buying things online, digitizing, SIM banking, becoming a huge rise. Now technology that's meant and designed for traditional banking is really lacking behind because because of the fees and the infrastructure it's built upon. So this is what's happening right now in Tanzania, I would say. And that's where we see an opportunity, and we really wanna shape this industry and be part of it. Now our our way to it is, like, we wanna bring tokenization in deposits and use the same rails, but then allow people to have more, like, cheaper rails when they wanna move money from peer to peer transfer, from business to business transfer, from merchants to network transfer, and or even to cross border payments. And I think that infrastructure has already been showcased that Stablecoin can do this, Blockchain can do this, and we wanna not only do it, but localize it as we do it. I wonder if it's the same where where you are. But in Tanzania, we are ahead, but it's quite ready to pay with, like, fees. Right. So yeah. What what I was gonna, I was gonna ask if you can explain maybe the mobile payments a little bit. I mean, if I understand correctly, it's very similar to or I don't

No. The SIM card is your wallet, and this started, like, a while back. You could just get multiple SIM card, any SIM card. But I think now all the providers, net mobile network providers, they're allowed they have stringent KYC, so you need a national ID to activate your SIM card. So everything now is tied around your national ID. Right. But if you're a foreigner like yourself, you just provide a passport. If you're it comes to Tanzania and you're not a Tanzanian native, you would just provide a passport, and they'll give you a temporary SIM card that maybe after, once your stay in ninety days, it'll expire, and then you can just renew it. Now for me, I've had the same SIM card for years, and it's just tied into my national ID. And the cool thing about it, I can even now open a bank account with just my national ID. Like, in in terms a new bank account or in terms of, like, your mobile money is like your bank account? There's a new new companies are coming up. So this year, like, even last year, you couldn't do this. There's a new, like, new bank that started that just you just put your SIM card and they tie in they tie that to your to your bank account. But what they really do is tie your SIM card to your national ID because that's the unique number that you only one time you will have it, and they create a an account from that national ID. Okay. Okay. Essentially, we could even it's like your one source of truth for KYC, so I can always know who who's the the the owner of this account is. And I think that's one of the biggest, like, push that's happening in Tanzania and East Africa in general for the past, like, five years. It's like national identification. It's gonna be the backbone of, like, how everything happens. Like, the way Social Security is used in America. I don't know if you report social security social security number. So that kind of ties your KYC and then provisions of what it happens with that. And now let's say if you're a regulated financial service provider, you need to have KYC that ties into your national ID.

Yeah. So in it, maybe I give give, introduction around the name. The name kinda came from a combination of national electronic digital assets, and our vision for it was more like create, like, a space where traditional finance means the digital world. So we also look at it as a as a asset because we called it national because we believe technology like this needs to be used by everybody. Right? So I think as an infrastructure, we're open source in the sense of, can we create equity around tech, but in a way that adds value and especially in financial rails and payment rails? Is there the way for you to get access to even on a feature phone, you can have a mobile wallet. So we can see the value of getting people financial tools has already been been created. Now what happens now is, like, can we upgrade this system now to the next level? Like, in any software or anything that you're building, it's like, hey. Stage one is done. How do we go to stage two? But building stage two, for us, the way we're thinking about it as Meta Labs is, like, it needs to be something that thinks not today, but even future products are gonna come. What kind of technology are they gonna consume? Now blockchain kind of shows the value of interoperability. I keep saying this because today in Tanzania, most people already have a SIM card. Then the next thing is that they'll have a bank account. The next thing they need now is a mobile wallet. So because all these are wallets, but one of them is traditional, comes with your phone. Second one is also traditional, non institutional, like, hey. I have private banking. Most people use it for financial record keeping and say if I wanna get a loan or travel, like, you know, have I'm employed. We go through traditional banking route. So I think you see how the traditions kinda grow together. So at Ned loves, we're thinking, okay. What's the next step after that? And I think we believe this having a digital world that can hold crypto assets. And when I say crypto asset, I'm not gonna say just meaning Bitcoin, Ethereum, or, like, DAI or any, like, you know, tokens. It's more like the value of what that can bring in traditional economies. Right? So you see M Pesa was essentially getting people to have wallets from just a SIM card. And then banking was essential in a sense like, hey. Come and have record of your transaction and become worthy to get loans and have a credit score and have, like, a financial trail. Now M Pesa is doing that as well with the with your M Pesa card. And then now we feel like, okay. These two areas already works. Now what crypto allows is interoperability. Now I can be able to hold digital asset from all over the world, and they allow me to kinda, like, tokens allow me to contribute, make decisions, vote, pull together. And I think this type of economy already happens in Africa, but it's not it doesn't have the infrastructure to happen on. And we're trying to use web tool and banking system to do it, and you see a lot of limitations in it from regulations to onboarding fees to moving money for peer to peer transfers like we spoke about earlier. So at Nether Labs, we're really trying to see, can we be the pioneers in this space? Predominantly issuing deposit tokenization inflows, but then on top of that, also being able to kinda be the backbone for the digital economy in terms of, like, creating DeFi products, creating virtual asset licensing and policing around it, but also use cases and pilots of how it works. Not a UBI token. And, I have a crazy story about that. So I think that's one of the thing that to me was like, oh, wow. This works. And, maybe I could talk more about that and then to really showcase, like, how, like, we're thinking about this technology. But, yeah, I'll say Netlabs is just trying to be the the next, like, financial service layer that helps people get into the the digital economy, not just by being in, but participating, contributing from no matter where you're from. Right. Right. I think it's interesting. I mean,

like, collect like, a pilot where, like, hey. If you can get this much plastic and verify it, we'll buy it from you and then give you a token that you can redeem. And did this pilot, but then we realized a lot of people can get on chain. It's quite expensive for people to get on chain. So the idea was like, okay. We see the value in blockchain, but then there's a lot of these limitations. I need to go to Binance. I need to pay somebody who's holding stablecoins, and they need to refund me. And I need to be able to kinda, like, refund them. So you find I'm losing a lot of money just buying USDT or any stablecoin. Because at the time, stablecoins are the easiest easiest entry to crypto, and then you swap it to other tokens. Right? So as we're building this, we saw a lot of limitations. So we're like, okay. We need to build a way for you to pay and take your Tanzania shilling and convert it into a digital asset. So that's how MetaPay came. So tried out for beta. So we had built it, but we couldn't get rails because it's not regulated in Tanzania. So a lot of, like, rails for you to come in, PSPs were like, we don't wanna touch that. Mhmm. So we even went to step ahead and get, like, robotic agents to use traditional colors to ping that, hey. If you get your transaction ID and you send it, we've tied this ID with MetaMask that will see the equivalents and give you your tokens. So a lot of patching of things that should not be patched together just to achieve something so small. So that's how NetAppay came to life. That demand of like, okay. I have my Tanzanian shilling, but I cannot tokenize it and get into the token economy. So NetAppay was built to kind of become an on northbound trail, predominantly for stablecoins. We're all in one stablecoin platform that allows you to convert your your shilling or any currency to stablecoins and vice versa. So in five countries, still testing out, the biggest limitation is still the regulator, not really because the regulators scare away providers to come and do it. So peer to peer transaction becomes the alternative, but then peer to peer transaction has a lot of fragmentation and liquidity. So let's say I have a thousand thousand or a thousand dollars, I wanna convert it to stablecoin. I might need to find five or different people to kinda pull from. Like, this guy might have 500, 200, 300, and then together, so that's very inefficiencies. But the guys who have a lot of liquidity are banks and fund managers, but they don't wanna touch crypto because Right. You know, it's not regulated. So we build something of a payment orchestration tool that allows them to never touch crypto, but just touch the order. And then you send your equivalent, and then in the back end, we refill you with stablecoins once the order is fulfilled. Now with that kinda, like, structure, a lot of PSPs, a lot of banks are kinda comfortable with this. So we're we've been working with the central bank here trying to be in the sandbox, show them the impact of this. And, hence, that's how we got into the UBI token as a way of proof. Like, hey. This technology has value. You just need to not think of it as because when the regulators in Africa, when you tell them crypto, they think Bitcoin Right. They think Volatility. 40 they see like, yeah. They just see the candles dropping every day because Yeah. Also, I met this record. One more time, we're talking to Central Bank. One of the guys is like, hey. This is Facebook Collective, and I'm like, when you get to investigate and ask them questions, they entered crypto. One of those at a bull market. Everything was so high, and they bought and it dumped, and they never wanna hear about it again. So they're like, hey. You know? Yeah. We're gonna tell you to buy a Bitcoin. So, I mean, there's a lot of maximalists in the in the space for Web three, but I think let's not take away from the innovation of around blockchain, especially in tokenization. I think even with the rise of AI and how people are consuming talking without knowing, I think the agentic creation is gonna bring a lot of rise in tokenization, and that is gonna require deposit to be tokenized. And I think this is where space is where a meter pay comes in and say, hey. This is the entry for you to tokenize any asset. We start with deposits because it's quite easy, and it's pegged one for one. So I'm equivalent, like, my deposit of 10 k is equivalent to the tokens I'm receiving. And I think this is what I really like about what you do with bread as well. Comparing with DAI, with Stablecoin, and then creating stacks around it, It's really abstracts what you do, and the entry point for me becomes almost traditional like ecommerce. But now I just buy points that allow me to get on this platform, similar to doing a game or because this is the generation that we're gonna serve in a couple years. Kids that grow up playing Call of Duty, playing, like, you know, FIFA, like, being on TikTok. They're gonna be the middle class, and they're gonna be aware of the digital economy because they're content creators. They've seen their parents come from community saving pools. So they they do understand how money moves economically. Right now, we're not at the stage yet, but I think five, ten years, we'll have those consumers. But right now, we'll be in the infrastructure for them. So MinutePay is like, hey. You wanna move money internally and across the country? We have the product for that. Now the other products that we create kinda like tying in the space of, okay. I wanna make payments, but I'm tied into one rail that is, like you say, my mobile network. But I wanna get out of that network and get into this economy that allows me to move. Now this way, tokenization really thrives. Right? So if we can create the entryway for this, I think we can now start creating products and utility around it.

Yeah. The conversations are always ongoing. Even right now, we're still we're still in talks with them, always, like, testing parameters of, like, okay, how how everything works. I think the the the importance of it is what matters. Right? Because when you're in finance, trust is very big. Because whatever we do, especially we are saying, hey. I'm gonna give you a rail for moving money, and I'm gonna we don't custody user funds, but we orchestrate and kinda route it to, like, you know, to allow them to have value in these spaces. So they need to trust us. So being regulated is a plus, such a huge bonus. So we don't shy away from that to, like, you know, most with three products and Yeah. Finance because they're like, I'm against finance. And I was even talking with John about this from the solar foundation about, hey. They'll do we need, like, you know, custodianship to be held by banks? And I'm like, in Africa, our biggest problems is infrastructure, not really regulators. Right? The regulators are there to even build this infrastructure because they lack for like, they lack builders. So if we can build and build with them, it's a huge plus. Now I gotta understand a mandate for a central banker in Africa is probably inflation tied into, like, you know, employment and also collecting yields, shelling selling treasury bills and bonds so the government has enough liquidity to provide for the economy. So when you tell them, like, I'm gonna revolutionize payment speed and all this, they don't really care about that. It's like, I don't care if it takes a day or three days. I care if it reaches there and the economy doesn't fumble. Mhmm. But we come from this this, like, no. It could be better from from we're from technology. So what we like, the biggest finding I would say, and if anybody is listening to this and wants to connect with regulators, speak their language from pain points they they care about. And this has been huge for us in a sense like, hey. People are gonna interact with crypto whether you like it or not. People are gonna always find ways around finding value and trading value among each other. That's how economies work for times, for generations, and years and years. Right? So what you need to do as a central bank is, like, hey. Create environments that allow them to use you as a legal like a proof of reference, trusted layer, also market maker that observes. Right? That's do what the central bank does. And instead of you shunning and limiting this, you're missing out on tax you can get. You're missing out on liquidity that could flow in your country. So for example, in our in our case in Tanzania, the bond market and treasury market is one of the highest in East Africa. Compare that with our inflation, there are our currency inflate at 3.5% yearly, which is really good compared to Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria. These are the biggest economies in in Africa. We are held really strong. So if you hold a Tanzanian treasury bill, even you yourself, you would earn up to 10%, 12% guaranteed per annum, whatever whatever income you come in. Now if you're holding stablecoin right now, if you're holding USDC, you'll never receive this type of returns. Mhmm. Like, you the most you'll get is maybe 5%, 4%, and then seven, eight if they are missing in with crypto and, like, you know, Ethereum and Bitcoin as your as investments, right, tools. But if you purely hold treasury bills in Tanzania or, like, money market funds, you're guaranteed 10%. Now this is a liquidity that a lot of our communities or products or people in the space could tap into and generate this yield. Now when we speak to regulators, we're like, hey. We see a lot of value in increasing liquidity by people holding treasury bills, but they cannot hold it through only traditional ways of banks and this. Can they hold it through stablecoin, like a local stablecoin that is issued by us and then verified by you, or is it by the central bank? And we have we use traditional rails, same thing you do, but it's just a ticket that can bid you to ticket. Mhmm. Now this is a conversation that central bank that can understand, like, okay. So you're telling me I'm gonna have an x inflow that comes to my treasury? Like, yes. You're telling me I have this, this, and this. Like, yeah. How's your KYC standard? Same when you use. How's your fund management? I'm using regulatory rails. So the way we collect our funds is to regulate the rails, mobile money, banks, traditional asset. But then we cover we try to since we're gonna get yields, we'll cover the cost with the yield. So I can your onboarding fee moves from 10% to 1% or 2%. So now this is, like, vital to the user. Now if I say, I'm gonna, like, now give you 10% yield, that's even safer because the market is at twelve fourteen. So still 10 is good. It's a good buffer. So now this language is easy for the regulator to speak and understand. Mhmm. So I would say how you engage this is first, it's good to build trust. It's good to be recognized. It's good to be known. And secondly, it's important to speak the language that resonates with the person you're talking to. You understand the the the tech and how it goes and the and the value around it. Now persuading or getting someone to also understand comes from the pain points they have and the value they see. So when once we communicate this, we start seeing a lot of acceptance and people saying like, okay. I see where you're coming from. And it's easy to get a sandbox environment and testings. And then we do a lot of pilots as well. So all of the stuff we've been doing, I say, from 2021 to now, combination of majority of it has been pilots driven. So we need a UBI token Mhmm. Where, around is proof of personhood. We say we launch a token on Kusama. So ideally, it was, hey. Meet up every ten days. Just scan our phone. We get we each get $2. Ideally, save your money. Spend this $2 in your community. Now this token, since it's a native token, you can only spend it where you accept it. So imagine if I this is $22,000 and sharing Tanzanian bill. It has value in Tanzania. I can probably buy, like, a meal with this. And if I was in Germany, no one will accept this. Mhmm. It's not because it doesn't have value, but because the person accepting it will have nothing. It's like, where am I gonna spend this? Just be a souvenir to them. But if this was a US dollar, you would accept it. Right? You'd be like, okay. I'll probably find it somewhere. I can change it to a euro or, you know, see. But the what changes was the currency. It was the utility around what you can do with it. If I can exchange it for something else or buy with something else, that's what in my that's what gives something a currency. So if you can do the same for tokens and say, like, hey. I'm gonna just allow this token to be spent in this community, then you start creating this circular economy around that area. So our idea was this. We see a lot of capital move from African communities. If I live in where I stay, for example, where the side of town I stay at, I don't know spend money there. I all the money I make get goes away from that community and goes where I probably I work or where I go shop and you know? So that really if that community does not see that capital circulation, you see, like, capital flight in most communities in Africa. And this is because the economy is not designed for you to spend where you're from. It's designed for you to get out and earn money and spend it outside your community. So you find the local shop does not do it. So but if you create a native currency for just that area, then you start seeing people spending more in that area. But then you don't wanna just influx it with just that currency. You create it almost as like a discount system, like a point system, more more like a they say, if I was gonna buy something for 2,000, I can buy it for 1,000 and an extra, like, new to, like, token for it. So it becomes like a discount system. So I accept this $0.5.70 percent in fiat, 25% in or 30% in the digital currency in that area. So for the users, like, hey. Yeah. I've saved 20%, right, money that I got from just being part of this community. And the shop owner is like, oh, I've, you know, I've got a I've given a discount, and then I'm probably gonna just spend discount in my community again. Now your job or the job of the community or our job was initially to kinda, like, educate people on this, but also allow them to understand the idea is not to hold your token, but to spend it and use it as a cash, like, subsidy. So you end up at the end of the the ten days, at least save, like, $5. That's the idea. You have an extra $5 you spend in your community. So if save that $5 and spend it in something else. Either you charge school fees, you know, maybe groceries, add in two grocery bills. So these type of utilities can all happen with, like, stablecoins and UBI token. Now when you go to a regulator and you'll be like, hey. These are the use cases we're finding. This is how we can trap more capital in communities. And as Netlabs, what we're truly trying to do is say, financial tools, at the end of the day, should not leave you depleted. They should add on to you. Because these banks, these MNOs that hold our money, they make stupid amount of money from our yields, from earnings that we make. They charge me on fees. They charge me on credit. Every time I take a loan, every time I move my money. So I'm like, okay. That's an outdated, like, Rockefeller 1920 banking model that really, in 2026, we shouldn't abide to that to this day. I really go I would go even further and make a controversial statement. I think people should get paid when they spend. Like, every time I spend my money, I should earn instead of losing. But we live in a world where I'm losing money by giving other people money that my money, they they spend in investing for me Mhmm. That give them yields and then come and tell me I I I don't have financial literacy. I said, no. Your systems are riddled for me to never get out. Right. Right. Right. So that is the, that is the the powerful thing that I think this technology can unlock. Yeah. I think Not redefine the world. You know? Yeah. I It's interesting to say that I think one of the things that that I find really interesting about what you're saying,

Now so check this out. So for example, right now, if I wanted to get a mortgage in Tanzania, that would take me back 16 to 18%. And I I've I've felt Like like the interest rate on the loans. Yeah. Okay. Interest rate on the loan. Mhmm. 16%. Wow. 18%. Now depending on the ticket size and your credit score, and and some of these things, they're not even native to a lot of African communities. Now if you're trying to grow an economy and your your interest rates are that high, it's quite dangerous for you to see, like, hey. You create a lot of, like, even not social gaps, but also lack of liquidity in the in the market. Now how does this happen? It's quite complex because it's it's like this because also the treasury bills of the country, that's the ticket they go for, 14%, 15%. Oof. I need to charge my laptop. Now because because this happens, you get you get this like, the biggest holders of treasuries are banks. And these banks, they are required because if they're they're holding, like, treasury bills from the government at that rate, and they're gonna lend the this is my money that I'm putting at their banks. Right? And they take it in by government bonds for them to mature at 12%. If I go and try to borrow from them, they will give me a rate higher than what they say what the ticket is. But then we live in a an economy. If we're gonna use the same standards, can we not now invite other ways for liquidity to flow in so we reduce the interest for our country? Because you meet all these bankers and you ask him, if people are borrowing at 18%, what is the default rates? They might I mean, they it's probably they default a lot. That's why you're charging them. They'd be like, no. Our default actually went down to 1%. You're like, so why is the interest rate so high? It's like but then you really realize most people making decisions in Africa are treating Africa as, third world country, which is I mean, to use loose loose terms, but they're even the gauge of standard how we're marking economies is benchmarked. So whenever you do that, you create a mean average. When you do a mean average, there's always gonna be a discrepancy. So and the reason why a lot of people are not in the economy is because the infrastructure is not built. It's not because they cannot participate. So when you use that equation, you will always find the majority of people do not qualify in your metric, but not because they don't fit your metric, because the infrastructure of even higher you can measure this equation is not built for them to be included in the equation. So when you do that equation, you didn't factor in, did I factor in this guy who's SME in bear but does never use formal eco economies? He probably used cash mostly Right. Than anything that we've accounted for. So you're you're cutting him at 20% less than what he actually circulates. Now when you start using these metrics, you find that it's never gonna work. But then I'm not an economist for a nation, so I don't wanna interfere with what they do. But I always believe we live in a time where everything you think applies in Africa does not apply. You need to rethink it differently. This is my personal opinion. We need to rethink credit scoring to credit investing. We need to rethink payments to investing. We need to to think everything that we traditionally do does not work for us. Because if it did, in the last thirty years, it would have Right. Matured something that is, you know, helping people. So when new denoides appear like blockchain orders, we should not only we should not jump on them, like like, without any research, but we should look at it like this. We are so behind in infrastructure, but the world is so ahead. Like right? So we don't have to reinvent the world and start from scratch. You should have like, hey. What works here? How can we kind of build parallel going to find alternative routes to get here? So we don't have to start, like, hey. Let's go and do this. We can start slowly, but then do it, like, outwards, like like, roots and not, like, the conversion or, like, x y graph that you Right. Right. Grow up. Especially now when we're entering a new era where productivity is gonna be so different with AI, and a lot of jobs are gonna be disrupted, especially in major industries that run Africa, because Africa is run by middle economies. Now I know I'm going a a lot of points. I will land to my point, which is the way we score people's value should not be parallel to what they create, but to what opportunities they can create so we can bring more liquidity and supercharge their their growth. So the same way you would treat a start up model if you're a VC. You're like, hey. I'm gonna invest in a 110 x platforms. And if one of them 10 x, it saves me 10% of what I've invested in. So even if I lose my money here, I'll make it back for one of them to exponentially grow. So So Africa should be treated like that. So you say, look at the industries, the value of the communities and then flooded with liquidity alternative from different spaces. And I think digital assets can do this. Same with what you're doing with Stacks, which could be like, hey. These groups, I they come together and they pull this much liquidity together. Can we match their funds? Can we, like, you know, create alternative ways for them to kinda grow Yeah. You know, how they pull money together. And that becomes a way to kinda, like, anchor it. So it's like, woah. Your interest rate went from 16% to 2% because you have a new collateral asset that is matched with the social equity rather than, you know, collateral from your house or something different.

out. Yeah. It is something that I I think even the name itself came came came to us because it was it just tied in so well. So we've been working with, community saving groups. It's not they're not new, and especially in Africa, you know, a lot of the backbone of economies is run by saving groups. My mom's been part of saving groups since I was young. She whenever I told her, like, hey. I'm interested in doing stuff like this. She always gives me this book that of part of the groups they're in. It's like almost they have, like, a thousand people in it, and they have, like, yearly reports. And she's like, hey. You should check this out. We did that. Because they never had, like, a platform or text, so they use banks to move things around. So I was like, wow. I think this needs to be digitized for the longest time. And then I came up concept of DAOs. This is, like, 2021. A lot of people are like, hey. Decentralized autonomous organizations and how they work, people can vote. I was like, okay. There's some heavy, strong principles that DAOs work on, especially with blockchain, voting, and stuff like this. So you find groups or you do this. Now when we did the UBI token, we did it with Ukumo. Ukumo is a network of small entrepreneurs around Africa, especially in Tanzania. They do they they come together, register, and work operate as groups. And then people with same interests are grouped in this went together, and they do activities together. They pull together and save money. And then, you know, they lend among each other because the interest rate is low compared to traditional banking like we spoke about earlier. So what we we try to do with Shkadau is create a protocol, a DeFi protocol, that can allow all these decisions to be done on chain. And when we started this, we have faced the same problems where you can't buy tokens. Still to this day, it's really hard to buy any digital tokens with fiat. So that's why we build build our stablecoin. Now one of the huge development that happened this year and the and the end of last year was now we can integrate wallet as a service around this protocol that we build. So WashkaDAO is a place for you as a member of any group. You can come and join the platform, create an account, and we'll give you a wallet inside it where you can fund it and move money for free inside it. And then your group can you can invite your group as well. They can create a portal, and then they can have a wallet. And then you can come in together, make decisions by proposing. The idea behind is this. Come as yourself, join a network of community, people that are aligned and doing something together, and make decisions in how your money moves. And then you can do this by contributing to, like, you know, buying shares or putting a pool together, and then you can disperse a pool among each other with mechanisms that you want and decisions making that you want, and the governance happen because you can now use your wallet attestation as a proof. Like, hey. I'm part of this group. I've contributed, and the money can be despised among ourselves. This is not something new, but what's what's innovating that we're bringing is the wallet aspect and the decision made pegged to proposals. Right? Now Yeah. We let the members or groups do whatever they want with it because at the COVID, we're just enablers of the tech and not the decisions they make. So it's like a white label coming in with the wallet and rails for you to put money and move it. And the cool thing is we wanna be big on the features we add. Ideally, if you guys can come together and say for the past six months, we've all contributed this month of money and this is the proof and trail, can you become investable? And then see each member that came with this group has earned more than actually lost. So saving pools coming together. There's a statement you smashed last time on our call that I really liked. It's almost like what's the name? Aki it's like stuck in the back of my voice. More like social enterprises having equity so they can you can borrow against community saving pools and not, like, you're treating them almost as entities rather. You see cooperative banking become a big thing in Africa. You see cooperative banks, especially in Kenya. Some cooperative banks have huge market share, like, competing with big banks. So and this is people, like, groups coming together, churches. Religious groups are really big in Africa. So churches coming together, entrepreneurs, network coming together, pulling money together. So if they have a platform that can do this, it's really about giving them the strongest feature, making it safe, making it, you know, reliable, making it a place of proof like a source of truth. Because one of the good examples, my mother, she's part of these groups, but she doesn't even know how much the group has. She uses them because every time she gets a loan, it's approved, and the interest rate are are low. She just has to pay every month. But if you ask her today, how much does your group has? She's like, I don't know. And quite frankly, she's like, I don't really care. Right. So you see the trust embedded already in these groups. I think it could be a new asset class that could bring more investable opportunities and bring that work down. So that's the work we're doing for Shkadau. And then from it, we got to meet the Hub and tested it with them, and we tested the UBI talking with them. And it's been quite, like, you know, a learning curve for both of us. And from that, we bring, like, the technology, learning centers, like a hub for education and to utilize these tools, and then adding resources. So my friend David met Colleen just being a part of KarmaDOW and then found out about what our work she does with solar foundation. He's like, hey. We are working with these groups with the UBI token. You wanna, like, also help them in terms of, like, being more sustainable with energy practice. So we give away, like, a thousand lanterns Mhmm. And pressure cookers, and then build a solar panel on the hub so they never have to worry about electricity. Now we're putting a broadband network, so they'll be having Internet at the hub twenty four seven. They already do right now. Another cool thing we're about to do by June is, learning center where people could come, and we have we think of having 10 computers. So if you wanna help us get more computers, please reach out. So ideally, it's create a center. People come learn and get certificates get you certified and have soft skills they can use on a day to day basis. But then in in that group, they use that technology to kind of pull together, save together, but also learn. Now learning tools that they can actually use. So even if even our technology and the tools we do, they come with embedded wallets that you can actually use to grow your income. Not just a story. Like, hey. Come in. Deposit. Learn. You'll earn. Cash out. See the cash in your hand. This incentivizes you to come back and tell a friend, and then the idea is build trust around your network. Yeah. That that's kinda like to touch points on all three. So the Homa Oshkadau and Solar Foundation are pillars that work together in helping communities actualize, you know, earnings in their communities so they can

That's quite smooth, actually, and love the work that Colleen and John are doing on solar foundation. They're very intuitive in, like, how they want it to happen, and I think they're also aware, like, hey. These communities already do things. Let's empower them by not, like, changing what they do, but also just, like, you know, building parallel with them. And I think that's quite huge, and it's been different from, like, experience of working with other organizations. I don't work with a lot of NGOs or organizations like that because, yeah, I think everyone has sometimes people have a narrative to sell more than actual, like, solutions. So whenever you see people active on solutions, I really tend to gravitate towards that kind of movement. If I come with my solution, that's I'm solving my problem. I did not, like, you know, understand what do these people actually need. But if I was an enabler, like, okay, where are the gaps? Can I put a bridge? Can I facilitate? Can I, like, you know, transition you, or can I help speed charge something like a catalyst? Whenever when we were in when secondary school learned this thing called magnesium four, it's a catalyst that speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction. Mhmm. But at it itself remains unchanged. And I think a lot of solutions we need right now should be catalysts because you don't need to reinvent the wheel, but you need to either speed up or, like, slow it down. So you just become a catalyst that does something. So I think that's been the sweet spot with what we've done with solar foundation and Ducommun and the Rashid Kadau movement. And I think that's kinda, like, the parallelism I I'm excited for or in the long term, you know, because it's quite dehumanizing thinking that these guys don't know what they're doing, and they need better solutions. Because who told you that? Right? Yeah. I could have there's so many things I can change, but then is it really necessary to change this? Is it a problem, first of all? Like, do you need to change this? And I think this is one thing that's quite too hard to grasp, especially if you're a builder because you really wanna build. You're like, oh, I see this. I want to change it. This this happened. You're passionate about innovation or change in communities. But then context is very important as well to understand, okay, why is it like this first? Why do people do this? Because then you might realize you are actually not solving a tech problem, but a culture problem. Sometimes people use certain tools not because they're better, but because that's what's comfortable in their culture to do. Like, I don't use M Pesa. My biggest problem with mobile money is not fees. That's why, you know, for a regular person, tell them, like I mentioned earlier, we will when we started, we're talking about we're really thinking about it's the fee. People people are paying so much. People would rather why would you pay 14% or 16% on interest? The person who's doing this, at that point, they don't care about the interest. It's like, hey. I need cash right now. Mhmm. I don't care how much I get it for. I just know if I press this button, I'm gonna have 10,000 shillings. How I repay it? Let me worry about that when I'm in that situation. So someone who will find, like, a motorcycle rider will take a loan in the morning for thirty k, gas up his bike, do some runs, you know, start earning money. At the end of the day, repay it at a 14% interest. You're like, dude, you just lost 15%. It's like, yeah. I'd rather lose that than not work at all. When you solve that problem, you need to solve it from the the initial decision you made in the morning to take that loan, not because why is the loan available at 14%. Right. Because then you realize it's it's already entrenched in convenience because it's like, hey. If I press this button, money's gonna come. Now coming back to the community saving groups, if we say, like, okay. So that's your logic of reasoning. What if you could get a loan from your community? Right? So you start pulling from that community, like, hey. This guy is part of our community. He does this particular business. He's gonna work, and then the day he's gonna pay us. So we have the social equity. And even if we default, we you know, most of these companies that when you when you borrow from them, they want you to pay at once. But, like, dude, you have my wallet. You know you can just take a thousand shillings every day and still keep me in your ecosystem, still make your money back, and my offer draft does not have to kill me every time I repay my money. So these type of innovations is what technology should solve, not reinvent access points. Yeah. That's just my my two comments on that in terms of, like, the synergy we should bring with innovation should match what's happening. And then from there, new inventions will come. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't invent new things in the process, but then you realize amazing innovations come once the problem is really solid and clear. And

Thank you, Yoshua. Always a pleasure talking to you. I think you're building something quite incredible with stacks and bread and your podcast as well. And, it's quite an honor to be a guest here. And, yeah, looking forward to any collaborations we can do and maybe get stacks because you'll be in Tanzania as well. That'll be something quite quite exciting to get and to see if it rolled out out here. If you like what I'm doing here, consider supporting the show on Patreon. Your contributions help me keep doing this work and dive deeper into the politics of decentralized technologies.