Start Zcash Community and Meetup Group in East Africa

Community Grants Applications
1

Background

I am the Leader of the Blockchain Club Of Uganda, a blockchain awareness organization in Uganda. My blockchain journey starts way back in 2015 as the Guild Head of My college blockchain club. I have since then worked tirelessly to create mass blockchain awareness in the country and region at large. I have grown vast blockchain connections with Sankore S2, a blockchain startup in Kenya and the United Africa Blockchain Association as we have worked together on a number of Blockchain initiatives in Africa.

Description of Problem or Opportunity

Given the high degree of centralization and bureaucracy in African systems and bearing in mind the core principles of blockchain, peculiar to Zcash Protocol, of privacy and convenience, I am obliged to introduce Zcash in East Africa. It should be recorded that East Africa rest greatly on tourism and thus receives an enormous number of Europeans, Asians and Americans on vacations. On top of the domestic adoption of Zcash, I believe this group will equally benefit from Zcash’s presence in East Africa. This is evident in the high usage of crypto p2p payments with many custodial exchanges flooding the region. However, most of them are still inefficient in satisfying scalability, convenience, privacy and reasonable pricing.

Proposed Solution

I therefore propose a strategic tap into the market through close partnerships with different blockchain and crypto organizations such as the Blockchain Club of Uganda(which I head) to bring about Zcash awareness in the region. Awareness will be through blockchain events(workshops) and media publications.
To this end, we shall also create a Meetup Group in Kampala City for further Zcash Meetups.
This will bring potential users especially tourism companies, hoteliers, cross boarder business operators and the general public at large.

Solution Format

We shall hold two workshops, one with the Uganda Tourism Board, and the other with Kampala Traders Association. At these workshops, we shall help people download as setup Zecwallets and demonstrate how to use them.
We shall also create a meetup.com group for Kampala City to help us in coordinating further Zcash Meetups as well as a local telegram group to grow keep in touch with the Zcash community as well provide technical support.

Technical approach

Workshops
Create a Meetup Group in Kampala City
Media presence(Both social media and mainstream)
Telegram group

Execution risks

Community members, particularly the target groups, are likely to take long to realize the solution Zcash tackles which will certainly protract our milestones.

Unintended Consequences

The team may be overwhelmed with constant movements to engage the target groups.

Evaluation plan

We hope to reach 1000 potential users 300 on each of the two workshops and 400 more through the media.
We hope to target and attract the tourism sector to start using Zcash.

Schedule and Milestones

Given that we shall be introducing Zcash in the region, we shall have at least five mainstream media stories about Zcash in December and hold the two workshops in January.
These workshops will be published on our Meetup.com group

Budget

Media Advertising(News Papers and Tv) $1200
Telegram Group moderation for January and February $300
Workshop1 $2250
Workshop2 $2250
Team Facilitation $1500

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2

Welcome to the forum @Mucu!

I am glad that this proposal could potentially introduce Zcash to a government agency and a traders union (Uganda Tourism Board & Kampala Traders Association). Do you have an experience introducing Cryptocurrency to them? If not, do you think they would be receptive?

Overall I am cautiously positive toward this proposal. I hope you can add potential risks and downsides in the proposal too. Cheers.

Edit: Comment on potential risks and downsides. Typos.

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Hello @tokidoki, thanks for your positive feedback.

Unfortunately am unable to edit my post but I hope a reply here serves the purpose.

Whereas I have not individually introduced cryptocurrency to government agencies, I have worked with a team that has executed the same while I was still volunteering with https://savannah.ug/ which gives me a bit of experience in the same regard.
On the other hand, our team has introduced cryptocurrency to a number of private sector in Uganda especially in the tourism sector.

However, on the downside, it is challenging to totally introduce cryptocurrency to government agencies due to bureaucracy(as mentioned in the proposal).
This is likely to protract our milestones beyond the planned 2 months period to execute our milestones.

I am however happy to note that our team is register with the government of Uganda https://www.blockchainuganda.io/ which is crucial in contacting and approaching the above groups.

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4

I have bumped up your trust level to enable post edit.

Glad to hear that you have been doing this for quite a while. Good luck with the proposal!

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Thanks @tokidoki I was able to edit our proposal with potential risks and downsides.
Please let us know if it is good to go.
Thanks

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6

Hi @Mucu ,

Thank you for your proposal. The ZOMG however has decided to decline funding at this time.

The new ZOMG may come up with a better strategy for supporting local meetups and events but during the last meeting of the former ZOMG, we felt this proposal was too niche to have a broad benefit for Zcash users.

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Thank you @Shawn for your feedback. I look forward to contributing to the growth of Zcash ecosystem through available avenues. I will also stay put for any ways you may ZOMG will create to support local meetups in East Africa. Meanwhile, I hope to create a Zcash meetup.com group for Kampala city.

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