Over 5 Million Students and 750K Teachers to Get Blockchain IDs in Ethiopia, Say...

Over five million students in 3,680 primary and secondary schools across Ethiopia are expected to get digital IDs starting in a few months as the government and Cardano partner to build a database of the country’s students’ and teachers’ credentials on the blockchain.

The Minister of Finance and his team conferred with the founder of Cardano and co-founder of @ethereum, Charles Hoskinson 1/3 pic.twitter.com/uSonGTqZUp

— Ministry of Finance – Ethiopia (@MoF_Ethiopia) October 28, 2021

In a recent report, the Government of Ethiopia revealed that it had spotted over 200, 000 fake degree certificates. Some of these degrees were offered by university colleges prompting the government to consider invalidating some degree certificates, the majority of which are held by government officials.

Due to its transparent nature and its immutability, blockchain is seen as a solution to check the fraud and fake degree cases which bedevil the country’s education sector. 

In 2021, the Ethiopian government signed a partnership with research and engineering firm, Input Output Global (IOG), to implement a digital student identity program on the Cardano blockchain network.

“The Ethiopian government is very much supportive of the program. We collaborate with the country’s education ministry in practically all aspects,” says John O’Connor,  who is Director of African operations at IOG.

IOG is contracted to design, build, and maintain the solution on the Cardano public blockchain platform.

“The benefits and features that the program brings in – including verifiable degrees, and digitization of the entire workflow – are all invaluable for the government,” says O’Connor.

According to IOG, the digital IDs are used to store the students and teachers educational records. In the long run, the government is hopeful that it will address the challenges facing the Ethiopian education system, such as fraud, fake degrees, and fake credentials.

Up to 750,000 teachers will also access the system and will be using their digital IDs to create and store records while enabling them to track students’ academic performance.

O’Connor hopes the system will one day be adopted by other African countries that provides students a digital identity that can track their progress throughout their education and careers. 

IOG also says that blockchain is the most promising technology to address key problems facing Africa such as poor governance, porous health systems, broken agricultural value chains, centralized finance, and botched education systems.

Verifiable digital identity is said to be at the center of credibility in all these sectors.

The program will largely rely on Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education running a full network node with schools using a light client to get access to this node running on the Cardano blockchain system.

“It works hand-in-hand with the governments’ unique identity number system.” – O’Connor

IOG’s original contract with the government targets five million students both in primary and secondary schools across 3,680 schools.

In due course, this will be expanded to higher learning education institutions such as universities ultimately reaching up to 9 million students in Ethiopia’s education system.

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China is expected to play a significant role in boosting the global economy by contributing to about one-third of the world’s growth in 2023, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has said.

China is set to account for around 1/3 of global growth in 2023, says IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva @IMFNews pic.twitter.com/18ChaKBWek

— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) March 27, 2023

Georgieva made the comments as part of her remarks at the 2023 China Development Forum in Beijing, noting a one percentage point increase in China’s GDP growth would result in a 0.3 percentage point growth in other Asian economies.

According to the IMF’s January forecast, China’s GDP is expected to grow by 5.2 percent in 2023, which is over 2 percentage points higher than the 2022 rate. Georgieva believes that China’s social and economic development plan, which has set a target of over 5% GDP growth in 2023, will contribute to the country’s robust rebound and the resulting boost to the global economy.

Georgieva credits the rebound in private consumption, as the economy reopens and activity normalizes, as the driving force behind China’s growth. However, she also acknowledges that global growth will face challenges in 2023 due to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and monetary tightening, which will slow economic activity.

“It is also clear that risks to financial stability have increased. At a time of higher debt levels, the rapid transition from a prolonged period of low interest rates to much higher rates – necessary to fight inflation – inevitably generates stresses and vulnerabilities, as evidenced by recent developments in the banking sector in some advanced economies.”

– Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Georgieva believes policymakers have acted decisively in response to financial stability risks and advanced economy central banks have enhanced the provision of U.S. dollar liquidity. These actions have eased market stress to some extent but uncertainty is high which underscores the need for vigilance.

In this climate, the IMF will be paying close attention to the most vulnerable countries, particularly low-income countries with high levels of debt.

China is seen as the shining light in a distressed global economy with some experts even more optimistic about the Asian giant’s economic growth. Chen Fengying, the former director of the Institute of World Economic Studies in the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, predicts that China’s GDP could grow by 6% in 2023 although Beijing has not included this ambitious goal in its official plan.

China’s GDP growth rate was 3% in 2022 year-on-year impacted by multiple COVID-19 outbreaks and a turbulent global landscape. The country’s GDP in 2022 was 121.02 trillion yuan ($17.95 trillion).

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