Jambo Polkadot Community
Polkadot Safari is the first Polkadot ecosystem event in Africa scheduled to start from 6 March - 1 April 2023.
It will comprise of a bootcamp, hackathon and conference which will be held in Naivasha Kenya, East Africa.
Bootcathon: 6th March - 29th March
Polkadot Safari bootcathon is a combination of the bootcamp and hackathon.
The program is meant to provide attendees with practical hands-on workshop setting to explore the latest thinking, patterns and frameworks to build on Polkadot which will allow learners to apply their new skills to their own DApps/blockchain projects.
We will have 2 weeks online bootcamp session taking participants through Introduction to Polkadot, Rust, Substrate, Ink which will then give learners the priority to join our hackathon which starts on the 3rd Week.
Our target is to have about 200 participants in the hackathon preferably in max groups of 5.
In general the program will establish a foundation for the growth of the Polkadot ecosystem by having trained developers in Africa.
We are encouraging teams to be made up of cross-functional skills in order to solve problems, create opportunities, and make a powerful impact by responding to evolving challenges and exposing them to the latest groundbreaking ideas and techniques.
They’ll also have the chance to interact physically with mentors and giving them humble time to come up with real solutions that are solving those challenges we’re facing in the African continent.
The goal at the end of the hackathon is that projects submitted have a solid business case or use case for the ecosystem and can grow sustainably.
Registration is ongoing here
Conference: 30th March - 1st April
Polkadot Safari conference will be a 3 day conference held on March 30th to April 1st at Sanctuary Farm located in Naivasha. It will bring together ecosystem builders contributing on Polkadot, parachains and projects as well as Polkadot communities in East Africa and some from other parts of Africa.
The sessions will comprise of presentations, panel talks, workshops and some side events.
Sanctuary Farm is right by Lake Naivasha, housing friendly zebras, giraffes, antelopes and a variety of birds. The event will have “barefoot networking” theme and the tone we would like to set is being immersed in nature, animal wildlife and outdoor stages.
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Our first aim is to introduce the Polkadot ecosystem along with its parachains to the African community, showcasing emerging technologies and spurring or ideating on potential use cases that can be implemented for the development of African society, infrastructure and environment.
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The second goal is to increase the visibility of projects on the Polkadot ecosystem that are built by African startups. Younger projects shall be given the opportunity to present themselves for the first time, while the more seasoned ones will showcase their progress over the past year.
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Polkadot Safari intends to educate and attract new talent to help build the Polkadot ecosystem, and intentionally make it inclusive for women as well.
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Foster a collaborative community and open dialogues of cooperation and avenues to support and empower Polkadot in the continent. There are a few builders in Africa already and hopefully we can strengthen and increase that.
SafariDAO
SafariDAO are a diverse collective with most of it’s members coming from East Africa. The core members are active web3 participants either as enthusiast, developers, community managers, project leads and crypto media personalities with a great network reach both online and in real life.
They have been supporting some projects and even hosted Ethereum events with a subsection of their community known as ETHSafari.
Other partners include H.E.R DAO Kenya which aims to sponsor women to attend the conference under the condition they participate in the hackathon and Kenya Blockchain Ladies DAO who will also provide volunteers to support the event.
Polkadot ambassadors
Polkadot ambassadors from all over Africa will be joining the event and Polkadot Safari would be sponsoring some. Ambassadors will be able to interact with the community, present some talks and ideas.
Why is this event important
While Bitcoin is arguably the most common crypto currency in Africa, several other chains have set base in the continent and have been conducting aggressive marketing.
Coingecko ranks Nigeria (1) and Kenya (15) among the countries in the world who are curious about crypto in a September 2022 report. The 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index ranks Nigeria (11) and Kenya (19) even with the slow worldwide adoption in the “bear market”.
There is certainly interest in capturing adoption of crypto/blockchain technology in emerging markets. In the recently concluded Africa Tech Summit Nairobi there was an interesting panel discussing how blockchain technology is already solving African issues and has real use cases that are impactful to the community.
Below are just quick examples of how other networks have been making their way into Africa.
- Ethereum relies on its community to grow its presence in Africa and at the same time enjoy support from Ethereum based foundations/DAOs.
- Cardano runs several education and investment programs through Emurgo Foundation/Emurgo Africa to attract builders and community members. They also run a permanent office in Ethiopia.
- NEAR runs a permanent office in Kenya that was established through Near Foundation and Sankore (an African focused blockchain community for NEAR ecosystem) as NEARKenya and have been building a solid community of builders.
- Binance Africa has been able to garner support with their p2p/easy on ramp crypto app all over Africa and even run weekly/monthly meet ups all over Africa. They also have had a focus on training about 1,000 developers from Africa.
- Recently Hedera through HBAR foundation in collaboration with AfrofutureDAO announced a $1M grant fund called the Africa Metaverse Fund and their idea is to support Africa creative industry.
I mean I could go on and on about what others like Celo (mobile first EVM compatible), Polygon are doing in Africa but the strength Polkadot has over all these entities is its community who have the ability to determine the future.
With this event happening in Kenya, its a strategic location in that most visitors from East Africa will be able to travel easily with no visa restrictions and so are other African countries.
We are also capitalizing on the Safari experience which is a worldwide attraction and give Safaris a twist of the new age. To the 90’s kid Hells Gate National Park is the park that inspired the Lion King 
and it’s only 45 mins from Naivasha.
Polkadot Safari have submitted their referendum and its up for voting. Please do take the time to go through and cast your vote Polkassembly
We also look forward to have more community members joining this event and making it a success. For now if you have any questions or feedback feel free to drop them here will get back to you, you can also check out our website for more details and our socials. https://www.polkadotsafari.xyz/
With that see you at Polkadot Safari folks, the only Safari where you can hack and attend blockchain conference.