Yesterday afternoon a live broadcast announced the biggest blockchain deal in history so far, and one that could destroy barriers to opportunities in the african continent and power African economic growth in the years to come. 

In partnership with Ethiopia's Ministry of Education, Input Output will create a blockchain-based digital identity for 5 million students and teachers. This is the biggest blockchain deployment anywhere in the world. Using Cardano with Atala Prism, this technology will create a national attainment recording system; to verify grades, monitor school performance, and boost nationwide education.

This is just the first step to realising Cardano's goal of becoming the World Operating System. Their technology is capable and scalable to provide Identity services to millions of people, and thus enabling banking the unbanked, another worthy goal that the organisation is working towards.

To allow access to online services people need to have connection to the internet first, as internet service providers do not serve remote and rural communities because of the high cost of providing the service. To alleviate this and ensure that internet access is available cheaply and reliably to everyone, Input Output, the company that created the Cardano blockchain (now fully decentralized), has partnered with World Mobile. Input Output's partnership with World Mobile will lay the infrastructure foundations for a totally connected Africa. Using Cardano blockchain technology to help empower remote and hard-to-reach areas across the continent. So everyone gets an equal chance to access services and opportunities, no matter where they live.

As there are only around 100 million cryptocurrency users across the world at the moment, this deal brings a fresh and young 5 million new users, which will represent 5% of the existing user base. With deals in the pipeline with Tanzania and numerous other African countries, there is a case for believing that the impetus for the growth of the Crypto user base will come not from the industrialized nations, but from places, like Africa, parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, where Crypto is not a curiosity and an investment vehicle, but a necessity to transact and store value and access education and financial services. Just think of what difference, for example, access to crop failure insurance could do to agricultural communities. It could really mean the difference between being able to feed your family or not in case of a bad harvest.

You can watch the recording of the announcement below, and maybe be inspired to explore blockchain technology to make a difference to projects close to your heart. https://youtu.be/yRjj662kJsk

Please share your comments below on what you believe the biggest impact you can foresee being triggered by this announcement, and join me in the Crypto Investor Circle https://app.geniusu.com/mentor_circles/1544?a_aid=luca ,  where we can discuss the wonders of this new technology and how to take advantage of it for true impact investing.