Sierra Leone goes into the history books as the first country to have its elections recorded on a blockchain. On March 7, 2018, the West African nation utilised the blockchain-powered platform provided by Agora in order to store and verify the votes cast during the country’s presidential election.

Agora is a blockchain-based digital voting solution that governments and institutions can utilise in order to facilitate a free, fair, and accountable democratic process. The startup aims to provide a platform that enables immediate remote ballot casting that is tamper-proof while maintaining transparency and verifiability. The Swedish startup has been developing the technology for over two years.

Sierra Leone introduced the use of a blockchain-based portal to record and verify the votes cast during its election. While it is the first country to incorporate distributed ledger technology into its democratic process, it is important to note that the ballot-casting process for the voter was the same as it was in previous elections.

Following the verification of their relevant identification papers and the subsequent casting of their ballots, choosing one of the sixteen presidential candidates running, the voters had their results manually recorded into the Agora platform. Keeping strict accordance with the paper ballot, the ballots were added to the Agora-created permissioned blockchain.

A permissioned blockchain refers to a type of blockchain where it is possible to appoint parties who can validate the data contained within the network. While the data within a permissioned network is usually available to the public, it differs from a “regular” public blockchain as consensus is not provided by all within the network, rather by a select group of participants.

In the context of the Sierra Leone election, the Agora platform decided on a number of organisations familiar with the socio-political situation within the country as well as those committed to ensuring an effective democratic process to act as validating parties in the election-verifying blockchain. The organisations included the Agora team, a group from the Red Cross, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) as well as the University of Freiburg.

While blockchain technology is revolutionising a number of industries across the world, its potential was witnessed for the first time in an election context. The Agora team announced that its implementation of blockchain technology resulted in a more effective use of time stating:

“[Blockchain] technology was used in Sierra Leone’s presidential elections yesterday, delivering results 2 hours before the official count.”

Following the inclusion of two new political parties into the largely bi-partisan political climate in Sierra Leone, incidences of violence were reported across the country in the lead up to the ballot.

Jaron Lukasiewicz, the Chief Operating Officer of Agora explained that the use of the blockchain can help mitigate such challenges. He stated: “A country like Sierra Leone can ultimately minimise a lot of the fall-out of a highly contentious election by using software like this.” This was also the first election within the country that included a televised debate.

While Agora’s platform was utilised merely as a way to record the votes as opposed to being the vehicle through which ballots were cast, this move represents a step in the right direction for democracy through fair and transparent elections within the country.