IOHK partners with Ethiopian government to revamp education system

Implementation of the Blockchain technology is going to enhance the educational experience of above five million students and 750,000 teachers across the east African nation.

IOHK partners with Ethiopian government to revamp education system

Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) is helping the Ethiopian government in leveraging blockchain technology to enhance its education system.

IOHK’s Atala PRISM ID will enable Ethopian authorities to create a tamper-proof record of educational performance for five million students studying in 3,500 schools. It will also help the government to narrow down locations and causes of educational under-achievement.

The developing team behind Cardano is deploying its expertise to provide Ethiopian authorities a system for the identification of both students and teachers, digital grade verification and monitoring of school performance remotely.

The director of IOHK’s Africa region operations unit, John O’Connor called Ethiopia’s blockchain-based education system a “key milestone” for his organization. He explained, “After five years of R&D, Cardano is now mature enough to underpin a blockchain solution which can scale to serve an entire national population.”

IOHK firmly believes that the blockchain-based transformation of Ethiopia’s education system could also be extended to post-secondary institutions, such as in digital verification.

Ethiopia’s education minister, Getahun Mekuria commented on the initiative:

“We believe blockchain offers a key opportunity to end digital exclusion and widen access to higher education and employment.”

In 2019, the organization embarked on a new training initiative in the country Ethiopia and Uganda, teaching women coding in Haskell language, the primary programming language behind Cardano. Beyond local initiatives, Africa is a central part of IOHK’s vision of bringing financial services to the world’s “unbanked population,” estimated approximately 1.7 billion.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes Africa is going to play a significant role in the development of blockchain infrastructure over the next five years. He is expecting to have several headquarters throughout the region over that period.