Africa’s leading blockchain infrastructure seeks to spearhead the tokenization of the rich natural resources of the continent.

Mahe, Seychelles, 27 July 2021, ZEXPRWIRE, “Once in a while, mankind unlocks a secret so profound that our lives are forever altered. We have fire, electricity, splitting the atom, jollof rice, blockchain…” These were some of the words of Ernest Mbenkum during his keynote speech at the launch of Bantu Blockchain – arguably the leading global Blockchain infrastructure built out of Africa for the rest of the world.

Africa and in fact other emerging economies – because of their peculiar economic situations, youthful population and an affinity for adopting new technologies – find themselves at a vantage point to repurpose emerging technologies to more specific and relatable use, especially in solving their socioeconomic challenges. One only needs to look at the inception,  explosion, proliferation and popularity of Mobile Money technology in many parts of Africa to fully appreciate how these demographics are able to easily take advantage of new technologies to cause rapid shifts in their way of life, social interaction and commerce.

As the rest of the world engages in debates about Bitcoin (Blockchain’s firstborn application) and its relevance either as a medium of exchange or a store of value, many other Blockchains have been innovated to solve more specific problems. These innovations have led to breakthroughs such as decentralised finance as well as  smart contracts.

What is Bantu Blockchain about?

Bantu Blockchain combines the best features of many of the leading technologies to address some of Africa’s biggest problems, and it takes a subtly contrarian approach in building for the general public first, and then for nerds and developers. Bantu Blockchain combines speed, security, reliability and includes human elements of fairness and sharing to empower participants on the network while lowering the entry barriers for participation. Unlike many other platforms that tend to benefit the early adopters; often those with a lot of money and mining rigs, Bantu Blockchain uses a fair economic incentive model to reward all participants of the network according to their contributions regardless of what time they join the Blockchain network as contributors in innovation and hardware resources. 

It is this contrarian – or better put – innovative approach that led to the development of adoption tools from the very first day of launch. Such tools such as the Bantu Token Creator that allows users (people or enterprises) to create blockchain based digital assets with just a few clicks and without the need to hire engineers are just one of the ways Bantu seeks to enhance adoption of the technology with relatable applications. When the barrier to entry of a new technology is low, the rate of adoption and innovation can be pretty explosive.

Bantu Blockchain applications and services are ready to use from Day One

Some of the Bantu Blockchain applications and services that are ready to use from the get go include:

• The BantuPay Wallet – a simple, secure and non-custodial wallet that lets you send, receive, swap and store digital assets such as corn, coffee, buildings, CBDCs, utility tokens, NFTs etc. The BantuPay wallet is built on top of the BantuPay payment infrastructure with a free API for developers and integrators to use to plugin.
  
• The BantuTalk Forum – BantuTalk is the Bantu Blockchain community forum created to offer a platform for sharing ideas and collaboration on Bantu Blockchain-related projects, DApps, protocols, and activities. It is where the vibrant community of users, developers and traders come to hangout.

• The Bantu Token Creator – a simple solution that allows one to be able to create digital assets on the Bantu Blockchain network with just a few clicks; thus eliminating the need for and cost of hiring blockchain developers.

• The Bantu Network Dashboard – an easy-to-use high level overview of the entire Bantu network in real time. A major convenience for anyone to be able to see how the network is running; the nodes that support the network, recent operations on the network, and other statistics.

• The Bantu Blockchain Explorer – The Bantu Blockchain explorer makes it possible for anyone to browse, search and view all activities taking place on the Bantu Network transparently and in real time, this will ensure that transactions are easily tracked anytime by the users.

• The Bantu Laboratory – a tool for Bantu Network developers to perform tests and transactions using the network testnet and mainnet, it is like the wallet but more for developers. It enables developers to create a wallet, send and receive assets and carry out other operations.

What are some use cases of Bantu Blockchain?

• Unlocking Liquidity from real world assets through asset tokenization.
• Micropayments Solutions – due to the ridiculously low fees and intrinsic support for micropayments which can be game changing in emerging economies
• Remittances – leveraging insanely fast transaction speeds (2-3 seconds) and ridiculously low fees.
• Decentralised Marketing (DeMart) – realtime incentivisation of marketers and influencers in relation to the quantitative and qualitative value of their audiences.
• CBDC – Platform for building Central Bank DIgital Currencies
• Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and Social Lending
• Voting and multisignature use cases
• Rewards – e.g. reward tokens
• Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Bantu Blockchain has gone live with Institutional partners from Day One

This is hardly the norm in the Blockchain space. Many projects put out a proof of concept and fancy (often compelling) whitepapers and then beat the hype drums to the highest decibels; but they end up not delivering on their promises when the hype is over. You do not need to look too far to identify such projects that are so popular but are fundamentally lightweight when one takes a closer look. Bantu Blockchain on the other hand, because of its approach to have Day One ready solutions has been able to attract industry players and certain governments to begin using its technology stack to build innovative, relatable and potentially life improving solutions. 

These institutions and Enterprises have also chosen Bantu due to the ease of adoption (low learning curve), ridiculously low fees and insanely fast transaction speeds (2-3 seconds), as well as support from a professional team who possess a deep understanding of Africa’s peculiar socioeconomic needs, and who also has huge experience with technology deployments.

Among such institutional and enterprise partners who are building on top of the Bantu Blockchain stack are:

• Sterling – “Your one-customer bank” is a full service national commercial bank in Nigeria that is changing and innovating better how banking and financial services are delivered in Africa’s biggest economy and beyond. They have an ongoing project that will bring huge liquidity into the Bantu Blockchain ecosystem and solve one of the most obvious problems people have identified Blockchain to solve in Africa’s highly populated continent.
• Interstellar – Is an African Enterprise Blockchain Infrastructure Company. Interstellar powers critical blockchain infrastructure for digital payments and financial institutions in Africa. Interstellar is one of the major 3rd Partners for the Bantu Blockchain. Interstellar already have championed critical African Projects for companies like Interswitch, Central Bank of Nigeria, Starvolt and SystemSpecs. 

• SystemSpecs – The Foremost Provider of Innovative Payment and Human Capital Management Solutions and Services.One of the leading technology companies in Africa that has processed payments to the tune of billions of dollars. Their solution will also be announced in due course.
  
• Convexity – CHATS, a product of Convexity, is geared towards aiding the transparent distribution of conditional and unconditional voucher cash assistance or aid to vulnerable communities and families via Blockchain token and Cryptocurrencies. The platform is built to fight against fraudulent practices and give the Donors, NGO, Beneficiaries and Vendors visibility and certainty of funds reaching the desired target. 

Did I miss an ICO? Was there ever one? How did the team get so far without one?

Bantu Blockchain did not do an ICO, nor did it raise funds from venture capitalists to build and accomplish all that it has done till date. It was built by a team of professionals who have strong conviction on the impact this ecosystem could make in emerging economies and the Globe at large. Many of these people have worked for free for most of the lifespan of the project.

The Bantu Network Utility Token (XBN)

The XBN is the native asset/token for the Bantu Network. It is a utility token that powers all operations and transactions on the network. Users and Enterprises leveraging the Bantu Blockchain stack and who carry out transactions on the network pay fees in XBN. 

Where can the Bantu Network Utility Token (XBN) be acquired?

TIMBUKTU: On 19 July 2021, one of our developer community members went live with a full Non-Custodial and innovative Peer to Peer Exchange named Timbuktu where members of the Bantu Ecosystem can exchange Bantu Blockchain based tokens with one another in a peer to peer manner using a wide range of payment methods. The service has been running with constant improvements being implemented by the very innovative and capable Timbuktu team. They took this product to market within 90 days of making their announcement.

BITTREX GLOBAL: Even at that, the rapidly expanding Bantu community have been campaigning for XBN to be listed on centralised Exchanges. We are therefore happy to announce here first that the Bantu Network Utility Token (XBN) will be listed on Bittrex Global Exchange today 27 July, 2021. Bittrex Global will be the first centralised Exchange to list XBN publicly.

Who is the team behind Bantu Blockchain?

The Bantu Blockchain Foundation (BBF) is a not for profit organisation that develops decentralized and scalable blockchain infrastructure, applications, and services that empower humanity. The Bantu Blockchain Foundation team rose up to the occasion to innovate a Blockchain Infrastructure that can address peculiar needs such as unlocking liquidity from resource rich locations which ironically are economically deficient due to prevalent extractive policies in place. 

The team has a remarkable combined experience in Blockchain (as thought leaders, entrepreneurs and programmers), Africa (as indigenes and residents), as well as work experience in Fortune 500 companies (as developers and deployers of enterprise grade solutions). Our team members have worked in various capacities at reputable organisations such as Apple, Dell EMC, PwC, ABB, MTN, Interstellar and Cisco Technologies. 

The Bantu Blockchain Foundation team members work from all across the Globe.

Media Links

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Media Contact

Name – Bantu Communications

E-mail – [email protected]

Company – Bantu Blockchain Foundation