The founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Mr. Zhao Changpeng, told President Yoweri Museveni that he wants to set up Africa’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in Uganda to lead to the inflow of capital into the Ugandan economy.
Zhao made the revelation on his recent 2-day working visit to Uganda to explore opportunities for using Blockchain technology in the country.
He met President Museveni at State House, Entebbe and Museveni welcomed this development and pledged Uganda’s commitment to becoming a global Blockchain destination, according to an official statement.
Binance is a platform that is used for exchanging cryptocurrencies.
Through Binance Foundation, Mr. Zhao Changpeng will also develop Uganda’s talent pool, in partnership with Crypto Savannah, a blockchain innovation centre in Kampala.
The talent pool project is slated start with the training of 1,000 blockchain experts, who will in turn train others.
The training is expected to empower the youth to build various businesses that can attract investment through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) which are a blockchain based crowdsourcing mechanisms.
Mr. Changpeng, a renowned world billionaire, was in Uganda at the invitation of the Blockchain Association of Uganda, to deliver a keynote address at the Africa Blockchain Conference.
The Kampala conference brought together policymakers, industry players and academia to address the role of Blockchain technology in Africa’s transformation.
Blockchain technology allows digital information to be distributed but not copied thereby creating the backbone of a new type of Internet.
This new technology has gained global attention that it has built trust into systems used for transfer of valuable information such as money and intellectual property.
According to experts, Blockchain technology can be used in Uganda, to address several ongoing challenges in the country like authentication of land titles, eradicating the problem of counterfeit drugs entering the country and authenticating of university degrees.
The first application of Blockchain technology globally was cryptocurrency, a type of digital currencies that are cryptographically secured and distributed on the network.
