Establish an Africa Catalyst School to be run by a joint team of experts from the main Catalyst School, Africa Catalyst Community Experts and Cardano Ambassadors who have the knowledge and experience to provide high quality onboarding services. It is expected that an Africa oriented Catalyst onboarding team can sustain the momentum that will be generated by the proposed Catalyst Africa Town Hall among the youth in the local communities.
Given the large proportion of youth in Africa,( Almost a billion people below 35 years as at 2020) the continent provides a huge opportunity for the rapid expansion and adoption of Cardano and Catalyst. A lot more effort must therefore be expended to engage Africa more effectively.
Most newcomers to Project Catalyst have experienced the challenge of understanding the entire Cardano and Catalyst framework and how it operates. To participate effectively in any role whether CA, vCA, Proposer etc. newbies must adopt an intentional approach to navigate the various online platforms and channels of communication and integrate into the community.
The Catalyst School has been very active in onboarding new people onto Cardano and Catalyst however, Africa’s participation in the Catalyst School’s activities is quite low for a couple of reasons including:
- Many people in Africa have absolutely no knowledge of Cardano and Catalyst
- A large francophone community (141 million people and growing) and Arabic speaking community (140 million people) which is largely not engaged
- People struggle to understand some live and recorded sessions because they are unfamiliar with the spoken accent of presenters
As a solution to these challenges, the Africa Catalyst School will provide the following:
- Outreach to the youth in tertiary institutions, workers and business owners to promote and raise awareness of Cardano and Catalyst;
- Provide onboarding to new entrants through:
o Live and recorded localized sessions facilitated by Africans in English and French for a start and eventually in Arabic. The emphasis is on having Africans facilitate the sessions to eliminate the challenge of poor understanding due to differences in spoken accent.
- Prepared courses on all the topics currently handled by the main Catalyst School ie. Introduction to Cardano Blockchain and Catalyst, How to be a Community Advisor, How to be a Veteran Community Advisor, How to be a Voter etc.
- The Africa Catalyst School will provide additional courses as follows:
(a) How to navigate the Cardano.ideascale.com website
(b) Brainstorming and Q&A sessions – These sessions will aim at gathering and sharing ideas on challenges peculiar to Africa so participants can use them as a launchpad for writing future proposals.
(c) How to turn an idea into an effective proposal on ideascale
Given the huge potential for the growth and expansion of Cardano and Catalyst in Africa, an Africa oriented Catalyst school will yield tremendous results.
Internet connectivity is the main challenge that could affect the successful delivery of this initiative. The target group, the youth, may find the cost of internet data expensive and may not fully participate as expected.