Context
There are over 500 political parties and thousands of civil society organizations in the Dem. Rep. of Congo. Since 2006, national and provincial elections have been held every 4-5 years. The resulting outcome is that over 80% of incumbents are replaced at each cycle, but little is changing in the management of the country.
This can be traced to the individualistic framework guiding elections: candidates do not receive funding from their respective parties and grassroot support is mostly in terms of attendance.
Due to low incomes and low education, the fundraising ability of candidates is limited locally. Given the sunk cost of an election campaign, each elected representative is incentivized to recoup the cost by being bribed by the governing coalition.
CrowdFunding candidates through blockchain offers members of the diaspora to support candidates on a contract-based basis whereby funding would be disbursed upon fulfilling their obligation.
Political dynasties can also be overcome given that funding and supporting allocations would not be controlled by the candidates, but rather through a decentralised organization.
Solution
DApp connects supporters to political and civil society organizations.
Local impact: Better candidates are fielded as supporters would be crowdfunding popular causes while more supporters will be engaged as their reputation will be recorded and can be transferable.
International Impact: Ability to support causes without being on the ground and without large sums of money. Many are willing to support a cause gaining public interest, but they are limited by the complexity of understanding the main objectives, the timing of the activities and transfer costs of sending relatively small donations.
Alignment with Challenge KPIs
Grass-root activism is a key application for nation building due to the power of incumbents within a clientelism and cronyism-supported system. Several countries and organizations are taken hostage by leaders/entities that have concentrated “usable” resources and are fundamentally invulnerable to coordinated/centralised actions by overburdened or impoverished delegators (electors).
Proposers commercial approach and negotiation strategy with different Governments
Grass-root organizations improve negotiation strategies and blockchain Dapps are tools which can improve the efficiency, transparency and, ultimately, success for social organizations.
Political entities relying on blockchain funding will also be inclined to support legislation facilitating the use of crypto currencies.
Participation of Cardano's Local Community Centers
Having hosted the Cardano Summit in Oct 2021, a Wada Hub with weekly meet-ups to learn Haskell and Plutus through project-based learning, the Goma Cardano Hub is a thriving community of Cardano adopters and members regularly attend Town Halls and other digital events. Hub participants are mostly students who vote for activities within student unions and are also active among civil society organisations. Student campuses such as the ones for ISDR/GL are meeting grounds for such organisations and their leaders are often studentsl.
Participation and/or partnerships with other international organizations
Trusting international organizations to achieve stated outcomes was publicly challenged by Elon Musk’s offer to end hunger if these organisations could prove that the funding and strategy were indeed sufficient to end hunger. The reality is that information on funding allocation within organisations is not public and often mismanagement reduces the effectiveness of funds. A DApp to support grass-root CrowdFunding can serve as a channel for funding and reporting at the same time. While inefficient allocations go unnoticed within international organisations, the transparent nature of blockchain offers supporters insight on the raised funds and the achieved goals, leading to potential withdrawal/increase of support in subsequent funding rounds.
Risks
- Scaling challenges. One template may not fit all organisations which rely on grass-root support. Candidates are not a feature in all organisations, some are nominated by higher institutions. Profiles to showcase causes may not fit the template offered on the website
- Foreign or unregistered support may be legally restricted
- CrowdFunding smart contracts may be complex to accommodate causes, candidates and students committees.
Solutions
- Sites such as GoFundMe utilise a template which can serve as a guide for our website where voting tallying and profile grouping can be added.
- Small donations are expected to constitute the majority of the support and these often are not subjected to the restrictions
- Smart contracts to manage allocation and crowdfunding will consist of escrow and crowdfunding templates which are mostly readily available through Plutus use cases and the team has already implemented solutions involving both aspects on the Testnet.