[Proposal setup] Proposal title
Please provide your proposal title
2026 African Blockchain Championship - Cardano
[Proposal Summary] Budget Information
Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA
60000
[Proposal Summary] Time
Please specify how many months you expect your project to last
9
[Proposal Summary] Translation Information
Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated
No
Original Language
en
[Proposal Summary] Problem Statement
What is the problem you want to solve?
Cardano lacks real-world solutions built by African developers. To fix this, top university talent must be trained, incentivized, and supported to build impactful ventures on Cardano.
[Proposal Summary] Supporting Documentation
Supporting links
[Proposal Summary] Project Dependencies
Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?
No
Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'
We don’t need but would appreciate active engagement from the Cardano community in order to make sure the challenges set are relevant! We would also like to have active support from developer educators from within the community.
[Proposal Summary] Project Open Source
Will your project's outputs be fully open source?
Yes
License and Additional Information
All project outputs will be published under open-source licenses to maximize reuse and community value.
Educational materials (curriculum, slides, videos, docs): Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0).
Code repositories (workshop exercises, hackathon projects): Apache 2.0 License.
Impact reports and documentation: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0).
[Theme Selection] Theme
Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal
Hackathons
[Campaign Category] Category Questions
Who you’re targeting, how you’ll reach them, and why this matters for Cardano.
We target African CS/engineering students, early-stage builders moving from ideas to real apps, and ecosystem partners to mentor and fund teams. We will reach them via existing partnerships with top universities, Cardano-focused workshops and hackathons promoted through campus networks and student groups, plus collaborations with UNDP AltFinLab, EMURGO, and Oxford Blockchain Society, sustained by social media, LinkedIn, Discord outreach. This matters because engaging Africa’s young, crypto-savvy talent grows Cardano’s builder base, builds real dApps, and secures leadership in emerging markets.
Provide a list of key activities of your project?
- Recruit and train Cardano tutors (incl. past ABC champions)
- Secure venues in Nairobi, Addis & with stable power, internet, seating, and catering
- Run outreach to hit 50+ signups with 15+ active participants per city
- Deliver 3 weekend workshops per city plus a 48h hackathon with infra, meals, and rewards.
- Evaluate submissions, advance top 1–5 to ABC Finals, and connect winners to mentors, investors, and accelerators
- Maintain community channels, publish impact report, and mitigate risks with backups for power, internet, catering, tutors, turnout, and ADA prize distribution.
What are your success metrics?
- Deliver 12 workshops across Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia, engaging 120+ students with 40+ exercise submissions.
- 40 submissions to the Cardano track with 15+ completed with verifiable repos, videos, and on-chain deployment, and select the top projects for the finals.
- Reach 5000 people via social media outlets, marketing efforts, and in-person events.
- Expand Cardano’s developer base in 3 African countries, showcase real-world use cases, and drive Catalyst visibility via LinkedIn, events, and media.
[Your Project and Solution] Solution
Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem
We propose to run a dedicated Cardano track within the 2026 African Blockchain Championship (ABC): a continent-wide hackathon series that gives Cardano a full month of developer training, workshops, and hackathons across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. It directly addresses Cardano’s lack of structured pathways in Africa by converting students into active builders with verifiable on-chain projects.
Building on the proven success of ABC 2025, which engaged hundreds of students and produced working blockchain projects across multiple cities, this Cardano track adapts and scales those tested methods specifically to grow Cardano’s developer base.
Project Phases
- Preparation (3 months before launch)
- Recruit and onboard Cardano tutors (including past ABC winners).
- Secure venues:
- Nairobi (Clutch Foundry, $250/day + $15/person meals).
- Addis Ababa (ALX, ~$300/day venue, $8/person meals).
- Zaria, near Ahmadu Bello University (trusted partner venue from prior success).
- Identify judges, mentors, and distribution partners.
- Confirm cross-chain bounty partners such as zkPass, flock.io, and Blockchain for Good Alliance.
- Release of the signup form and launch video around 2 months before the first in-person event.
- Pre-Training (1 month before launch)
- Train tutors and operational staff on the Aiken curriculum and hackathon operations.
- Begin community engagement campaigns in each city.
- Finalize operational logistics for food, merchandise, and participation reward systems.
- Training and Hackathon (Dedicated Cardano Month)
- Four consecutive weekends per city:
- 3 weekends of Cardano/Aiken workshops per city, with homework and peer learning.
- 1 weekend hackathon (48 hours) as the capstone.
- Participant Incentives:
- $4 participation prizes for verified GitHub pull requests.
- Pool prizes for any working Cardano on-chain submission.
- All submissions logged on GitHub/public repos, with evidence of Cardano deployment.
- Evaluation Phase
- Judges review all Cardano submissions using transparent criteria.
- Panel of independent judges from the community will nominate top 1–5 Cardano projects to advance to the ABC Finals.
- To encourage collaboration between top project teams, we will have several Gold Medal Prizes, each worth $1k, Silver $750, and Bronze $500. This is determined by the panel of independent judges from the Cardano community.
- Provide targeted mentorship and feedback to finalists.
- Championship Phase (Finals)
- Top Cardano projects compete alongside winners from up to two other smart contract protocols (no more, to avoid dilution).
- Finalists continue development with added mentorship and ecosystem exposure.
- Finals event showcases Cardano’s strong positioning in Africa’s cross-chain developer ecosystem.
- Post-Event Support
- Continued engagement with promising projects entails Introductions to incubators, accelerators, or investors for next-stage growth.
- Close-out report will contain metrics (attendance, submissions, finalists, and ADA distributed).
Why This Matters
- Impact: Gives Cardano an entire dedicated month of visibility across three major African tech hubs. Aligns with student academic calendars to maximize participation and trains 120+ African developers, produces 15+ Cardano projects with on-chain evidence, and expands Cardano’s presence in 3 key African tech hubs.
- Feasibility: Venues, logistics, and operational playbooks are proven from ABC 2025. Local advisors in Nigeria(Emerald), Kenya (John Ndirigiri), and Ethiopia (Kidus) ensure cultural and academic alignment.
- Value for Money: Cost per click in web3 ranges $1-$4. In 2025, the ABC newsletter amassed 3k signups. Assuming a 30% conversion rate from awareness to the first step of signup, this means that our overall reach was around 10k individuals. This alone would hence be valued at ~$10k even if we assume only $1 CPC. Moreover, 11 projects out of 50+ submissions received a prize. With our improved project plan and gained experience, we believe we can increase the number of fully completed projects to at least 15 and the number of high-quality contenders to about 6 (potential to become startups).
[Your Project and Solution] Impact
Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community
The African Blockchain Championship: Cardano Track gives Cardano a dedicated month of visibility and adoption in three major African tech hubs (Nairobi, Addis Ababa, and Zaria). This creates value in three ways:
- Builder Growth: Onboards 120+ African web2 or web3 engineers and product builders to start actively contributing to the Cardano ecosystem by building real-world projects.
- Practical Adoption: Ensures participants not only attend, but also create wallets, transact, and stake ADA, tying learning directly to on-chain activity.
- Project Pipeline: Produces 15+ Cardano projects, with 5+ being awarded Gold, Silver, or Bronze Medal for outstanding submissions by the panel of community judges, documented with GitHub repos, demo videos, and CardanoScan transaction links.
- This converts exposure into sustained developer participation while showcasing Cardano’s ability to power real-world applications in finance, education, and identity.
How can we measure this impact?
- Onboarding: 120+ Cardano wallets created during workshops. At least 100 verified transactions and staking events (the first 120 workshop attendees are eligible to receive 4 ADA if they successfully transact and stake on the testnet).
- Learning: 40+ verified GitHub submissions from workshop exercises.
- Projects
- 40 submissions to the Cardano track with 15+ completed with verifiable repos, videos, and on-chain deployment.
- Reach 5000 people through social media outlets, marketing efforts, and in-person events, thus increasing awareness regarding Cardano.
- Visibility:
- Social/media reach tracked via LinkedIn, XDiscord, and the number of QR code scans and tinyurl click-throughs from our posters.
We will share the outputs and opportunities that result from our project via the following methods/channels:
- Open Source: All projects published on GitHub with repos, documentation, and CardanoScan proofs.
- Community Sharing: Results shared via Cardano Forum, Project Closeout report, and on our social media
[Your Project and Solution] Capabilities & Feasibility
What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?
Preamble on Proposer Relationship with ABC
This proposal is submitted by Kidus Elias in his individual capacity as a member of the Cardano community. Kidus will serve as the Cardano representative in the upcoming African Blockchain Championship (ABC), ensuring that Cardano has a strong and dedicated presence within the competition.
The African Blockchain Championship itself is a blockchain-agnostic platform that engages multiple smart contract ecosystems. For this reason, it is not ideal for ABC as an entity to be the direct proposer under Catalyst, since doing so could create perceptions of bias towards one protocol. Instead, an individual community proposer represents Cardano in partnership with ABC.
We concluded that a structure where a Cardano community member represents the blockchain partner and is the owner vis-à-vis the organising entity.. It mirrors how Catalyst has previously funded individual community members to represent Cardano at global Web3 conferences.
About Kidus Elias (Proposer)
- Developer of the Cardano Aiken course, currently used to train African developers in smart contract programming. Here is a link to the self-paced course that he developed as a contractor to ABC 2025: https://directed.notion.site/Cardano-Learning-Center-1bd52c038379801d9950e052cf82bd7a?source=copy_link
- Recruited 4 Cardano tutors across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria. These tutors were responsible for delivering Aiken workshops during the last ABC hackathon.
- Delivered a four-month remote bootcamp, mentoring developers from beginner level to on-chain deployment.
- Mentored by Simon Sällström (DirectEd Development CEO) for the past six months in both curriculum delivery and hackathon event organisation.
These experiences establish Kidus’ capability to steward Catalyst funds responsibly, deliver measurable outcomes, and ensure transparent reporting of all evidence and on-chain payouts.
African Blockchain Championship (ABC)
The ABC sets to position itself as an aggregating platform that facilitates cross-chain collaboration, bridges information access and opportunity to talented developers, and fosters partnerships with legacy institutions that seek to utilise blockchain in their innovation agenda. In 2025, ABC delivered:
- 13+ workshops across Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
- 40+ exercise submissions collected via GitHub/homework.
- 11+ final Cardano project submissions, with 5 winners selected. Here is a demo video of the third-place winner: https://www.loom.com/share/6afc71f684de4c438b81556d04975ebf?sid=71c31404-f1ba-408b-b8f3-f8208fdce93c
- $8,000 ADA prize pool distributed on-chain, fully verifiable via block explorer. (1st batch: https://cardanoscan.io/transaction/99095ab9418644cf1f8b4a09dc1838e4b54e6f934ca2dd2ee7407c7d881f9f30. 2nd batch, https://cardanoscan.io/transaction/819fbee598a7835fb1fa1d89cd15e56bc87904154a2ec40719c19ea47e561ce5))
- Two of last year's sponsors were Midnight and Masumi
- Partnerships with UNDP AltFinLab, EMURGO Africa, Oxford Blockchain Society, ScalingX, RadicalxChange, and others.
- Mentorship support from global experts such as Yash Goyal,
In addition, we plan to leverage lessons learned from last year's hackathon, such as:
- Making it simple for participants to join
- Investing more in fewer: Quality > Quantity
- One smart contract protocol at a time (monthly themes, leading up to a grand final in the second half of the year)
- More extensive preparation in the form of scaffolding and templates, so that participants can surpass the initial challenges
In conclusion, by combining Kidus’ role as proposer and Cardano representative with ABC’s delivery infrastructure, we ensure both personal accountability to Catalyst and ecosystem-level capability to achieve impactful results for the Cardano community.
[Milestones] Project Milestones
Milestone Title
Milestone 1: Preparation & Capacity Building
Milestone Outputs
- Recruit and train 3 Cardano technical educators to prepare and deliver a 4-part in-person workshop series (2 hours each, with homework).
- Adapt the existing Cardano/Aiken curriculum into workshop modules (videos, readings, and exercises with GitHub PR submissions).
- Secure venues: Clutch Foundry (Nairobi), ALX (Addis Ababa), Zaria (near Ahmadu Bello University).
- Obtain quotes from at least 2 suppliers per city for merchandise and rollups.
- Longlist 10 potential judges (Oxford Blockchain Society, EMURGO Africa, Cardano Foundation, etc.).
- Confirm at least 2 ecosystem partners (e.g., Gimbalabs, Intersect, EMURGO, Cardano Foundation) to support mentorship and developer readiness.
- Awareness building: Produce and release a launch video promoting the Cardano track, to be distributed on social media, campus networks, and Cardano community forums.
Acceptance Criteria
- 3 educators have been successfully trained, and the curriculum has been finalized.
- Notion-based self-paced course published with modules and lessons.
- Venue readiness plan documented (city, venue, capacity, fallback options).
- Supplier quotes compiled and documented
- Judges: longlist of 10 + at least 2 confirmed ecosystem partners.
- Launch video published with public link.
Evidence of Completion
- Names of tutors with LinkedIn and GitHub links
- Link to the Aiken course notion page.
- Venue readiness plan (Doc with venue details + fallback options).
- Supplier quote spreadsheet
- Judge/partner email confirmations or social media post links
- Public link to launch video.
Delivery Month
3
Cost
20000
Progress
20 %
Milestone Title
Milestone 2: Workshops & Kick-Off Hackathon
Milestone Outputs
- 4-part Cardano workshop series delivered across 3 cities (Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Zaria), totaling 12 workshop sessions. Each workshop is 2 hours long, includes structured GitHub homework, and requires tutor follow-up.
- Kick-Off Hackathons: 3 simultaneous 2-day hackathons (one per city), enabling participants to form teams and produce early Cardano dApp prototypes.
Acceptance Criteria
- 12 workshop sessions delivered (4 modules × 3 cities), each with pictures from the event, slides, and one video recording per module.
- At least 40 exercise repos collected from workshop participants.
Evidence of Completion
- Workshop documentation: Photos from each session, workshop slides, and only 4 published video recordings (one per module).
- GitHub activity: Public repo link showing ≥40 exercise submissions from workshop participants or a spreadsheet with at least 40 repo submissions.
Delivery Month
4
Cost
30000
Progress
60 %
Milestone Title
Championship Judging, Prizes and Closeout
Milestone Outputs
Builder Phase and prize distribution
Judging is only done after the 1-month-long builder phase, which follows the kick-off weekend (from milestone 2). This allows the builders time to refine and get feedback on their product before a final submission is made in May. The judges, possibly in conjunction with the Cardano community, evaluate the final submission in May and check for cheating (i.e., taking an old project).
$4k to 6k worth of ADA will be split between the top 5 projects. The exact amount is to be determined, but the higher-placed projects should be commensurately rewarded!
Closeout report and video - Including, but not limited to, the following data: - Aiken/Cardano Trainers trained - The self-paced course - The number of developers who fully and partially completed the Aiken curriculum - Cardano/Aiken project submissions to the African Blockchain Championship's Cardano track
All reported evidence is submitted to the Milestones here.
Acceptance Criteria
Championship submission
- At least 15 projects that also make a final submission to the African Blockchain Championship, Cardano track.
- At least 5 finalist projects selected from the submissions, meaning that they should receive an on-chain ADA award payout for their hackathon performance!
Reports
Including, but not limited to, the following data:
- Aiken/Cardano Trainers trained
- The curriculum
- The number of developers who fully and partially completed the Aiken curriculum
- Cardano/Aiken project submissions to the African Blockchain Championship's Cardano track
All reported evidence is submitted to the Milestones here.
Evidence of Completion
Championship final submissions and prize award
- URL to the project submission (either a public GitHub repo, link to the deployment, or a video where they demo or present their submission). It should be discernible how it is related to Cardano.
- URL to the project submission (either a public GitHub repo, a link to deployment, or a video where they demo or present their submission).
- URL to the social media posts with the announcement of winners
- Link to a block explorer with each of the transactions of the bounty prize money.
Delivery Month
6
Cost
10000
Progress
100 %
[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs
Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources
Milestone 1 – Preparation & Capacity Building (₳20,000)
Labor
- Project Manager (Kidus – curriculum adaptation, logistics, coordination): ₳3,000
- 3 Tutors (training before delivery, reviewing curriculum, dry-runs): ₳1,500 (₳500 each)
- Advisors (John, Emerald, Seungheon – regional and technical input): ₳2,000
Non-Labor
- Venue readiness planning (pre-booking deposits, utilities): ₳2,500
- Curriculum production (slides, GitHub repos, exercises, training docs): ₳3,000
- Merchandise & branding prep (rollups, flyers, shirts): ₳2,000
- Marketing and launch video ₳5,000
- Contingencies and transportation ₳1,000
Milestone 2 – Workshops & Kick-Off Hackathons (₳30,000 )
Labor
- Tutors (delivery of 12 workshops + hackathon support): ₳6,000 (₳2,000 each)
- Local coordinators (logistics across 3 cities, 6+ events each): ₳2,400 (₳800 each)
- Project Manager: ₳3,000
Non-Labor
- Meals (workshops + hackathons): ₳10,500. Below is a breakdown of estimated spending per country.
- Nairobi: ₳15 × 75 × 4 = ₳4,500
- Addis Ababa: ₳10 × 75 × 4 = ₳3,000
- Zaria: ₳10 × 75 × 4 = ₳3,000
- Which is ~₳10,500 total
- Venue rentals: ~₳4,600
- Nairobi (Clutch Foundry): ₳250/day × 4 = ₳1,000
- Addis (ALX): ₳300/day × 4 = ₳1,200
- Zaria: ₳600/day x 4= ₳2,400
- Internet + backup power: ₳1,000 (Package purchases, Renting routers for reliable connectivity)
- Branding & merchandise: ₳2,000 (shirts, banners, rollups, badges)
- Participation incentives: ₳500 (100 × ₳5 GitHub PR rewards)
Final Milestone: close out, judging, and prize distribution (₳10,000 )
- Prize distribution
- Announcement of winners
- Compiling the close-out report and video
[Final Pitch] Value for Money
How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?
Back of envelope calculations
One way of evaluating the Value for Money is by calculating the general cost of acquisition in the web3 space and the 2025 edition of the African Blockchain Championship. This analysis reveals that even when only accounting for the exposure and projects that start their journey on Cardano, it justifies about 70% of the cost of this event. It is hard to quantify the reputational benefits of being affiliated with the African Blockchain Championship, UNDP AltFinLab, and the second-order benefits of building local ecosystems in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. These countries alone have more than 230 million people and constitute key tech ecosystems in Africa.
Cost per click in web3 ranges $1-$4. In 2025, the ABC newsletter amassed 3k signups. Assuming a 30% conversion rate from awareness to the first step of signup, this means that our overall reach was around 10k individuals. This alone would hence be valued at ~$10k even if we assume only $1 CPC. Moreover, 11 projects out of 50+ submissions received a prize. With our improved project plan and gained experience, we believe we can increase the number of fully completed projects to at least 15 and the number of high-quality contenders to about 6 (potential to become startups).
Compared to the Cardano Africa Summit
For the Cardano Summit 2025 events, the Cardano Africa Summit, to be held in September 2025, hosted by WADA, was allocated a budget of USD 400k (400k ADA), which is more than 6x our budget. While we couldn't find much information about this online, our understanding is that it will likely be a 1-2 day in-person event in Nairobi seeking to attract an attendance of, ideally, 500+ attendees. This would be for a non-technical audience. With this type of precedent in mind, we believe that our proposal represents a much better value for money in comparison as we are both (a) actively expanding the ecosystem of Cardano with deep education of young technical people through 12 in person events (b) getting real projects that showcase use and utility on the ground, and (c) at a cost that we estimate to be roughly 1/2 of that the Cardano Africa Summit 2025.
[Required Acknowledgements] Consent & Confirmation
Terms and Conditions:
Yes