Ground breaking technology can go in surprising directions. Take blockchain in Pakistan. The story of this software already reads like something from a particularly wild work of fiction. It was originally created to allow decentralised trading in crypto currencies such as Bitcoin. It was launched in 2008 by person or persons unknown, using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto: although many people have since claimed that they are the “real” Satoshi, the identity of the developer or developers remains shrouded in mystery.
The software is revolutionary in a number of ways. It is a decentralised, distributed record or “ledger” of transactions, stored in a time-stamped, nearly inalterable or tamper-proof way, using cryptographic techniques. It is a peer-to-peer system not controlled by any single central authority. It was designed to allow reliable rules-based trading in currencies or tokens by individuals anywhere in the world, many of whom might want to remain completely anonymous. The Economist has called blockchain a “trust machine”.
Originally championed by a heterogenous group of financial speculators, teenage computer nerds, libertarians and privacy campaigners, the technology has been shown to have a multitude of other different and potentially transformative applications over the past decade. Many international banks and a new wave of financial start-ups have been experimenting with blockchain as the platform for all kinds of payments systems. As the world moves into the era of the digital revolution the potential for blockchain seems to be widening. It is being championed as the platform to allow peer-to-peer trading in renewable energy. There have been blockchain trials in fields as diverse as music copyright, land ownership records and supply-chain and logistics management.
Two organisations began looking together at possibilities for an innovative education-related blockchain application in Pakistan. On the one hand was DEMO, an Islamabad-based consultancy which specialises in training for entrepreneurship, skills development, technology and communications.
Chief executive Muhammad Bin Masood says: “Our forte is capacity building, training, and programme development.”
On the other was Manchester Digital Laboratory (known as MadLab), which describes itself as a not-for-profit, grassroots digital innovation organisation focused on science, technology, arts and culture.
Rachael Turner, MadLab director, says that because of its willingness to experiment, MadLab has been described as an “anti-disciplinarian organisation”. Both clearly enjoy working with each other and value the ability to be flexible, quick to react and ambitious.
Supported by the British Council’s DICE Fund, they came up with a massively ambitious programme that seeks to do no less than four separate things, all at the same time.
The first of these – the core of the programme – is delivering a three-day training boot camp for women social entrepreneurs in four Pakistani cities. Deliberately, the team chose some of the harder-to-reach cities where internet connections are less secure –Hunza, Skardu, Swat and Abbottabad.
Since the cities were hard to reach and their inhabitants spoke different dialects and had their own specific business training requirements, the second element of the programme was to identify four community partners to adapt the training to local needs, to link up to local stakeholders, and to provide the women with tailored advice. This meant that 152 women were trained and contact was made with more than 600 organisations and stakeholders. Muhammad describes the project as “an amazing roller coaster ride” that has thrown up all sorts of challenges, but also opened up more doors than they ever imagined.
The aim is to take this second objective further, eventually building up a national social enterprise training network.
Blockchain comes into play for the third element of the programme. The women are being issued with certificates of course completion. These are valuable documents, since they attest to the skills acquired and will be useful for subsequent business and career development. The idea is to make these certificates available on a secure, blockchain-based platform, and, in time, to offer this service to other informal and formal education providers.
Originally published by Pioneers Post