Charles Hoskinson, Co-Founder and CEO of IOHK, the company responsible for building Cardano ($ADA), announced yesterday (October 26) that he had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government of the Republic of Burundi.
An MOU is “an agreement between two or more parties outlined in a formal document.” Although “it is not legally binding”, it does demonstrate “willingness of the parties to move forward with a contract.”
Here is how the IOHK CEO announced the news about this agreement with the small central African nation:
Interestingly, around eight hours earlier we got a hint that a deal between IOHK and the government of Burundi was imminent after Hoskinson tweeted that he had changed his Twitter profile photo to a photo of one of his meetings with Évariste Ndayishimiye, who is the President of Burundi:
Hoskinson had tweeted about this meeting (which was all “about the future of Burundi’s digital transformation”) a day earlier:
One $ADA HODLer and influencer tweeted about the potential impact of this MOU in Burundi:
And before Hoskinson arrived at Burundi, he was in Zanzibar, meeting with President Hussein Ali Mwinyi, as part of his tour of Africa.
Yesterday, Tamara Haasen, Chief of staff at IOHK, explained that the meeting with Zanzibar’s president had been arranged thanks to help from Africa-based blockchain-powered mobile network World Mobile ($WMT):
Haasen also tweeted this Messari infographic to show how decentralized $ADA ownership is compared to several other popular blockchain projects:
It is worth remembering that in May 2018, during a previous tour of Africa, the Cardano founder signed an MOU with Dr.-Ing. Getahun Mekuria, Ethopia’s former Minister of Innovation and Technology (and its Minister of Education since February 2020):
Then, just short of three years later, John O’Connor, IOHK’s African Operations Director, announced in an IOHK blog post published on April 27 “an exciting new partnership with the Ethiopian Government to implement a national, blockchain-based student and teacher ID and attainment recording system to digitally verify grades, remotely monitor school performance, and boost education and employment nationwide.”
O’Connor went on to say that IOHK will implement this via its Cardano-powered identity solution Atala PRISM, which would “enable authorities to create tamper-proof records of educational performance across 3,500 schools, 5 million students, and 750,000 teachers to pinpoint the locations and causes of educational under-achievement and allocate educational resources effectively.”
He also mentioned that this system would “provide all students with blockchain-verified digital qualifications to reduce fraudulent university and job applications, and increase social mobility by allowing employers to verify all applicants’ grades without third-party agencies.”
According to data by TradingView, currently (as of 12:00 p.m. UTC on October 27), on crypto exchange Kraken, $ADA is trading around $1.9729.
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