What if you could alleviate poverty, spur economic growth, and provide for global integration of trade and finances — all with one elegant solution?

Ambrosus has recently launched an ambitious project to do just that.

We’re partnering with Hong Kong-based Bitquant Research Laboratory and Tanzania’s Wageni Technologies to develop an ecosystem of global financing and product tracking — with the potential to unlock economic opportunities for millions in the developing world.

The pilot project challenge: Connecting coffee farmers in Africa with investors in Hong Kong and markets in Asia. Are you ready? We are.

The problem

According to Bitquant’s founder, Dr. Joseph Chen-Yu Wang, farmers and producers in developing countries remain trapped in a “chicken and egg” cycle of poverty that goes like this:

Farmers need money to make initial investments, such as buying fertilizer and equipment, but it’s extremely difficult to obtain.

Once their produce is ready, selling it globally becomes a challenge due to lack of an established supply chain and global markets.

Small investors in developed areas, such as Hong Kong, are seeking investments just like this — ethical and impact-driven investments that make a difference in people’s lives — but they lack access to opportunities in developing countries.

Our financial system simply isn’t optimized to provide small loans like this to farmers, and it certainly isn’t going to be tracking coffee produce from farmers to distributors in Asia. That’s where we come in.

The solution

The Coffee Pilot Project, which is using Ambrosus technology for infrastructure development will help families in Hong Kong make small investments of the order of $10–20,000, which will then made available to coffee farmers in Africa.

Cool, right? But there’s more.

We’ll also create a flexible platform for tracking coffee produce from farmers to distributors in Asia. Different documentation is required for customs clearance in different countries. This will all be tracked by Ambrosus. As always, we’ll record crucial verification data, including product photos, food certifications, characteristics, shipment tracking, temperature/humidity sensor data, and any other relevant information.

Where the magic happens

The movement of products is closely tied to the movement of finances. However, goods and money typically travel in opposite directions. Ambrosus’ agile core architecture will allow for tracking and data capture of both.

Plans for 2018 and beyond

In addition to developers from Bitquant Research Laboratories, Ambrosus has five developers working on implementation. The project will follow an agile development cycle where loans and shipments are already in progress; these experiences are being used to streamline the development of the platform and app.

We will then move to scaling this model, with the goal of trading of several other commodities between Africa and Asia.

Global Impact

Here’s where we think even bigger.

The Coffee Pilot Project will demonstrate the successful integration of financial instruments and micro-loans across continents, and can be scaled up for various economic activities across the world.

It will provide access to global markets for farmers, weavers, artisans, and small manufacturers, leading to worldwide wealth creation. We’re getting in at grassroots of developing economies and building an ecosystem from the ground up.

At Ambrosus, we’re building a universally verifiable, community-driven ecosystem to assure the quality, safety, and origins of the products we consume. In doing so, we’re setting our sights on changing the world. We hope you’ll join us for the ride.