Blockchain To Track Coffee Exports in Ethiopia

By Dmitriy

 The blockchain fever is spreading and more and more people are experimenting with this new technology. Ethiopia too has found a unique use for this advanced technology. Ethiopia as a country takes pride in one of its largest exports, coffee. They have recently developed ways to track the exports of coffee via the use of blockchain.

The country has recently tied up with the leading blockchain research and development company IOHK to develop blockchain applications for coffee shipments and other areas of agriculture. IOHK has partnered with Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology. As a beginning project they are exploring the supply chain traceability for coffee, which is their largest export.

Dr.Ing Mr Getahun Mekuria who is the minister has said, “The Ministry of Science and Technology and IOHK are collaborating in researching an area of application to use their blockchain platform, Cardano, to be built upon by Ethiopian developers.”

IOHK is also working towards brilliant empowerment programs for the Ethiopian population. They will provide free training to up to 100 Ethiopian software development students in Haskell, a difficult programming language used for mission-critical applications and blockchain development. The first batch is going to comprise completely of women.

These courses will be taught by IOHK’s world-class industry development team in Addis Ababa which happens to be Ethiopia’s capital. The faculty will also comprise of researchers in IOHK’s Blockchain Research Lab at the University of Edinburgh. They plan to hire a few of these developers and the rest will invest their skills in the market and add to the economy.

The programming language that these locals will be learning, Haskell, is extremely in demand in the market right now due to its compatibility with blockchain applications. The entire operation is being supervised by John O’Connor, Director of African Operations at IOHK.