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Industry

NGO

Customer Profile

eKitabu is an NGO operating out of Nairobi, Kenya. Their primary business is helping deliver education and e-books to the local community. The company has a great footprint in Kenya having delivered educational content to over 1,500 schools.

Situation Analysis

eKitabu being heavily tech based is always interested in exploring new technologies to help the constituents in the company’s focus region. As such, eKitabu was looking for a way to utilize technology to help farmers in Kenya easily exchange grain with purchasers. This is a difficult process for many Kenyan farmers that struggle with quickly and accurately exchanging grain with buyers. Often farmers are underpaid for grain and miss out on key funds that can be utilized to maintain their businesses.

Solution

eKitabu’s search for technology to help innovate grain transactions for farmers led the company to explore the creation of a blockchain proof of concept (POC), Mtama. The Mtama POC focused on utilizing the Ethereum blockchain to explore the ability to securely transact between grain farmers and buyers. The web based portal allowed farmers and buyers to use the blockchain to transact directly in Ether. The unique system allowed for the buyer and seller to digitally sign off on the exchange. These signatures were stored directly on the blockchain and could not be tampered with allowing for a permanent record of both parties confirming the exchange was correct in all aspects. This process helped assure that both the correct amount of grain and the correct payment were in place before actual value was exchanged helping farmers to avoid issues with under payment.

Benefits

The POC allows for a system of transparency and security between the farmer and buyer forming a basis for a digitally immutable party agreement before goods are exchanged.

Technology Used

• ASP.Net Core
• SQL
• Azure
• Ethereum

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