Since launching our channels on May 3, the Zcash East Africa community has been steadily building a home for Zcash on the ground in the region. Our regular rhythm so far has been a monthly meetup, valuable for keeping our core warm, but it reaches fewer than 60 people, most of them already Zcash-aware. To actually grow the ecosystem here, we need moments that put Zcash in front of hundreds of new people at once.
So I’d like to share a proposal we’ve submitted to the Zcash Community Grants committee: a grassroots activation at ETHSafari 2026, East Africa’s largest Ethereum event (Sep 4–12, Nairobi → Kilifi). Rather than a traditional sponsorship, we’re treating ETHSafari as a strategic entry point; onboarding new shielded users, sparking real first transactions, and recruiting a founding cohort of developers into a future Zcash EA developers initiative that will continue after the event.
Proposal link: Zcash East Africa @ ETHSafari 2026 · Issue #397 · ZcashCommunityGrants/zcashcommunitygrants · GitHub
Why ETHSafari?
ETHSafari is Africa’s premier Ethereum gathering — 500+ attendees, 120+ hackers, and 73+ speakers in 2025, backed by 20+ ecosystems (Coinbase, Base, NEAR, Celo, Optimism, the Ethereum Foundation). It runs as a journey: a hackathon and activation in Nairobi, the “blocktrain” across the savannah, and a conference and festival at Beneath the Baobabs in Kilifi.
It’s the densest concentration of African builders and users all year and Zcash has almost no footprint in that room today. Our belief is one this community keeps proving: privacy money spreads through normalization, not persuasion. People adopt Zcash when they meet others who use it, and someone sits beside them for their first shielded transaction. Africa is a natural home for that message — financial privacy lands harder here than almost anywhere.
Goals
The primary objective is to convert a large, high-intent audience into new Zcash users and long-term contributors:
- Onboard new users to ZODL and walk them through a real first shielded transaction.
- Recruit and vet developers into the future cohort of a standing Zcash EA developers initiative.
- Grow and activate the Zcash EA community beyond the monthly-meetup ceiling.
- Build relationships with founders, projects, and potential merchants across the region.
Planned Activities
If funded, our presence would include:
- A dedicated Zcash booth staffed across the Nairobi and Kilifi phases.
- Hands-on ZODL onboarding, with a little starter ZEC so attendees complete a real shielded transaction on the spot.
- Live demos of ZODL and CipherPay point-of-sale, showing how individuals and merchants transact in Zcash.
- A speaking slot and a panel appearance on shielded payments and financial privacy.
- Developer sourcing via booth conversations, demos, and an optional hacker-bounty challenge.
- Recorded builder/researcher interviews and daily social documentation as lasting ecosystem assets.
Beyond the Event
The newly onboarded members we meet are funnelled into a structured follow-up program — office hours, a builder channel, mentorship, and bounties turning conference conversations into real experimentation and, eventually, ZEC integrations. New users onboarded at the booth feed back into the Zcash EA community, raising the ceiling on our own programmes.
Expected Impact
Success will be measured through:
- New ZODL onboards and first shielded transactions (verified on-chain, privacy-preserving).
- Developers recruited into the future cohort and active in follow-up.
- Zcash EA community growth, with a day-30 retention check.
- Documented integration leads and relationships.
- A comprehensive post-event report — metrics, on-chain evidence, media, and lessons learned — published to this thread within a week of the event.
Given the event runs Sep 4–12, we’d be grateful for expedited review where possible. Feedback very welcome
thank you for everything you do for this community 
ETHSafari sponsorship deck or event link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DCS3gYStuhf9asuTB4zq0Vi2qrgmnIzm/view?usp=drive_link` `