Block.One, the company behind the EOS Blockchain Protocol, has announced a virtual competition for the EOS Community in Africa. The winners of this event will be invited to join the Global EOS Hackathon and compete in the Grand Finale which will be held in Cape Town, South Africa, on December 7th 2018.

The announcement comes soon after the end of the London EOS Hackathon where EOS Nairobi Chief Executive, Daniel Kimotho, represented the EOS Nairobi, Kenya, and African communities.

Why Africa?

The announcement to have the EOS Community in Africa participate in this virtual competition and in having the finale in Africa seems to have been influenced by a number of factors. Of particular interest is a Reddit post by an EOS Nairobi Community member that got a lot of attention for Africa.

Hong Kong. Sydney. London. San Francisco. Where will the #EOSHackathon Grand Finale be held? Watch til the end to find out where it may be, and stay tuned for the reveal. pic.twitter.com/B8U6zaRaCW — Block.one (@EOS_io) September 28, 2018

Several African Block Producers, including EOS Nairobi, had been in talks with Block.One since early August and it seems these discussions have culminated in getting these events coming to Africa.

In July, one of the EOSIO protocol core developers, Phil Mesnier, was in Kenya, to train a team of EOS developers on how to develop on the EOS protocol. This training has equipped the Nairobi team with the necessary skills to help scale the EOS community across Africa.

AFRICA – we heard you. In the spirit of a truly Global #EOSHackathon, we're excited to announce a virtual competition for the EOS Community in Africa where winners will be invited to join us at the Grand Finale https://t.co/gUYHEotjaC — Block.one (@EOS_io) October 2, 2018

Following the above tweet from Block.One, it seems all of the above efforts have influenced the decision to have a virtual competition for the African EOS Community and in having the grand finale come to Africa.

EOS Nairobi Statement

EOS Nairobi is very excited to see the event coming to Africa. In a statement, they said:

“Now that the event is happening in Africa, we will advance our work of training developers in the community. The classes will happen in Nairobi Kenya, port Harcourt and Lagos Nigeria as well as Gaborone in Botswana.

We plan to have many developers understand the EOSIO software. We will also give expectations from the experience we had in London in order to have winning teams in the finale.”

Beyond this, the community intends to start promoting this grand finale across the different African countries and reaching out to the various embassies and companies to help support the EOS Hackathon Grand Finale.

Africa holds the greatest potential in showing the impact of blockchain technology. We miss most of the old legacy systems like traditional banking infrastructure. If there is any place to launch blockchain applications, it’s in Africa.

We have shown through mobile that we are capable of leap frogging traditional tech directly to new tech. With a young population that is growing by the day and into the new century, there is no greater chance for uptake of blockchain technology except to invest in Africa now.

Blockchain is a technology that was truly meant for Africa. Block.One seems to be re-inforcing this idea and believes Africa truly does have something to offer in the new economy.