Please describe your proposed solution.
Context
African specialized NFT marketplaces are almost non existent and the few that are emerging need to leverage the possibilities offered by NTFs in three fundamental and crucial areas:
- Culture
- History
- Gaming
NFT marketplaces have witnessed a staggering growth in the last few years all across the globe and are projected to continue to grow in the upcoming years. Most NFT projects that reference stolen artifacts from the continent lack a concrete strategy to recuperate and return them to their original and rightful owners.
<u>Cultural and Historical aspect</u>
Very often, the lack of financial resources prevents Panafrican groups from hiring a well versed legal team to help them reach this goal. One of the most active groups in this field is Bobiso Media. The group, through its founder, and activist Mwazulu Diyabanza has been traveling across the globe to educate about the stolen artwork, and exposing the injustice of this phenomenon (stolen artifacts held in western museums). The work they are doing although impactful, has not made significant progress because of limited funding. They now have several lawsuits on their account from several museums and countries accusing them of trying to steal artwork. We are currently working on contacting his team and presenting our approach/support.
Le Louvre in France is a classic example of one of those museums that has stripped Africa of its valuable ancestral artwork and until now refuses to start a reparation conversation. Belgium, Germany and many other countries are no different. Here is Mwazulu Diyabanza at the African Museum Berg en Dal in Holland educating about a stolen symbol of peace from the Lemba school of life in the Congo.
Even just last week, we witnessed a mind blowing scene where Philippe (The king of Belgium) offered back, as an indefinite loan, a traditional mask of the Suku people to Congo's national museum. The mask has been held for decades by Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa. To be explicit, this means a stolen artifact that belongs to the people of Congo is now being loaned to them.
<u>Gaming and market aspect</u>
Africa is also very late in general when it comes down to offering NFT services to the gaming industry. Gaming is now present everywhere in the continent and is only going to grow even more in the next few decades. Most of the games, if not all, come with characters that have very little to do with the realities of the local context. There is no real offer to multinationals of local digital gear such as (costumes, shoes, swords, hats …etc) as a service to integrate into the games, allowing local players to consume them. Africa is becoming more and more a go to place for young artists to harness inspiration. Very often, multinational top brand companies reference or use local communities artwork, such as weaving, drawing …etc at their profit without any possibility for local communities to benefit a proportion of it.
One example we could highlight here is the use of the kola nut. Local communities use it in several contexts, one of them being eating it to recharge their body after a tough day, or during a break from hard work. It also symbolizes unity and solidarity in other contexts. Although the kola is present in the majority of the cultures on the continent, their economy and symbolism remains local. What if we represented this as an NFT that could be used in a game where soldiers are fighting in groups to liberate the invaders of their land? This will be more meaningful to an African kid playing the game than him using a gun he has very little knowledge of.
Another example is a slingshot toy. Growing up in Cameroon was fun in so many aspects, we would fabricate sling shots to go hunting. Slingshot are powerful weapons that are used in so many different ways in the local context. They are another perfect candidate for a NFT that could be used in game as a gear that would fit the mental model of a local player context.
Solution
At the core of our solution is an African NFT Marketplace that offers opportunity for cultural, historical and gaming market potential as mentioned above. The first iteration of the marketplace will be implemented as a 2D marketplace showcasing digital art work in the form of NFTs. The second iteration will create a virtual 3D museum picturing a real museum that will have been built from resources generated by renting / selling of digital artwork as mentioned above.
On the cultural and historical aspect:
We will create NFTs linked to ancient artifacts stolen and held in museums across the world, and NFTs from local creative artists. These will be displayed on the NFArt / NFCraft marketplace and will be either rented for a set amount of time (those stolen) or sold to the communities (Individual, Schools, Institution, museum …etc).
Each of these NFT will be accompanied with documentation relating its story as seen by Africans (as opposed to the story we are told by the same people who stole them). The documentation we will attach to NFTs will serve our education and awareness approach which is an essential starting point in the process towards returning stolen artifacts to the originating communities. In fact many people still ignore those artifacts even exist (Their location, country …etc) and worse their history (as seen by African).
This will also mean that originating communities can finally benefit from the extortion of their history. Any profit from selling/renting will go into a treasury which will be primarily allocated to:
- Legal fees towards recuperating these stolen artifacts
- Redistributed to the rightful artist producing the artifacts
- Constructing local physical museums to secure and preserve the artifacts
On a more current aspect:
The plan here is to identify hidden artists on the ground. Very often local artists produce incredible artwork, but have a very limited audience and exposure which significantly hinders their ability to sell and benefit from their creativity.
There are three aspects to the work we will be performing on the ground:
- Digitizing outstanding artifacts / creation processes and publishing them on the market place.
- Running multiple parallel marketing campaign around the marketplace promote it as a go to place for gaming producers to buy/rent and integrate gears that fit the local context their product is sold within.
- Making the artwork accessible to any individual willing to buy or collect NFTs
General strategy:
Disruptive IT Cameroon (DITC) is committed to solving local African issues in a holistic way. In this mindset, we have secured a partnership with the Panafrican Ufulu library that already runs regular conferences on the ground with the main goal to encourage readers of historical and cultural books to translate their reading experiences into artwork. They organize conferences that are centered around specific books, that culminate in an activity called read to art.
Read to art consists of readers reading books (within the pre-selected conference topic), then creatively express what they are feeling through art. They are exposed to more conversation and inspiration at the conference before creating their masterpieces. We plan to build an extended database or catalog to hold drawings of selected samples which people can purchase:
- physical purchase: painting on canvas or print the work as a customized T-shirt
- digital purchase: buy an NFT copy
This activity is a new opportunity for artists to have additional community engagement around their literature and also opens an opportunity for additional revenue streams to help fund the various activities of the library and acquire more books. Here are some examples of the first read to art.
The panafrican library Ufulu is located at an artistic hub of Dschang and has developed a solid reputation among artists of all fields who often visit the library to find inspiration and seek examples of African symbolism. It is therefore a rallying point to attract more artists and get them to produce works that would funnel into the Marketplace platform. The NFArt / NFCraft marketplace is aiming to be the main outlet for these exceptional artwork issued from this activity.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
At the core of this project is a NFArt, NFCraft marketplace product with a lot of consideration for the local context. The potential for massive adoption is real.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The success of the project can be assessed using the following criteria:
- The number of stolen artwork identified and digitized into the system.
- The number of hidden exceptional artwork uncover and expose on the platform
- The traffic in virtual museum and the transaction volume and value they generate.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
We plan to share the output trough our media platforms