ISIG-GOMA Cardano Hub

Launch a student hub in Goma to inspire young developers to choose Cardano through conferences and hackathons promoting Haskell and Plutus.

Paul Mupenda

5th year university student (Computer science), previous experience in Haskell programming.

Member of the college of ISIG-GOMA students.

Participated in Wada's January Haskell hackathon

Wada Cameroon Hub support with technical training and coordination

[IMPACT]

In order to engage students at the univeristy, we will put on three introductory events to capture the attention of students and then offer several 3-day virtual hackathons to further engage students in a more practical way. Finally, those who excel in the hackathon will be funneled into a more serious training with Wada's Cameroon Hub to become trainers in Wada's Haskell and Plutus education initiative.

The activities we will organize (in French!):

In addition to hosting introductory lectures on the Cardano ecosystem and Project Catalyst, the Student Hub would do the following:

1. Organize programming sessions on Haskell and functional programming for computer science students who will be sanctioned by Hackathons
2. Create a path for the best products from the Hackathon sessions so that they can receive a scholarship to learn Plutus or Atala Prism
3. Encourage the student to participate in Project Catalyst as community advisors by introducing them to decentralized governance
4. Accompany students who wish to apply for funding through Project Catalyst

Cardano aims to be a major player in decentralized digital transformation in Africa. To achieve this goal, it is important to engage with local stakeholders (governments, NGOs, private sector companies) in carrying out projects that solve real problems in the market. But this is only possible if the Cardano ecosystem through Project Catalyst can help in training local developers to find solutions to local problems using the Cardano blockchain.

People might not be initially interested to participate in these events especially if it comes at a personal cost (in terms of transportation, internet costs, and time).

We plan to mitigate this risk by motivating people to come to our events. Not only will we be providing refreshments, but we will also have small motivations for those who attend to cover their transportation costs (approx $1/person). In addition to the small motivations there will be the opportunity to receive more financial compensation through various prizes at our events, especially the hackathons. Additionally we will provide internet to those who participate.

[FEASIBILITY]

Phase 1: The first three events should take place monthly over the three months post funding.

First event: Introduction to blockchain / Cardano

Second event: More on blockchain: use cases, applications, and opportunities

Thrid event: Project Catalyst Ecosystem (Proposal Submission, How to become a Community Advisor, and voting)

Phase 2: Following these events we will then host several virtual hackathons with prizes, channeling the energy we create through our events into practical applications.

Phase 3: Funneling the students who excel in the hackathons into Wada's larger Haskell and Plutus education initiative. We will be working with a project based learning approach in collaboration with Wada's Cameroon Hub, who are working on real solutions to implement in Cameroon and therefore will have real applications to work through to train these future trainers/Wada developers.

Budget: $12,000

Internet: $1,000

Attendee motivations: $1,000

Refreshments: $2,000

Speaker motivations (travel and logistics): $5,000

Hackathon prizes: $3,000

Not budgeted (provided through school partnership): Conference room, electricity, sound, projector, etc.

Paul Mupenda: Project lead in Goma, 5th year university student (Computer science), previous experience in Haskell programming, member of the college of ISIG-GOMA students.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-mupenda/

Vianney KITUMAINI: Senior Software Architect and Developer, 8+ years of programming experience, Multilingual (French, English, Lingala, Swahili)

Director of ISIG-GOMA Information System & Head of IT Department

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vianney-kitumaini-b526ba102/

Wada Cameroon Hub to support with technical training and hackathon implementation and coordination:

Manfo: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (F#, Haskell, Elm), Multilingual (French, English, Italian, Ngiembo)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/felicienfotiomanfo1642a479/

Nkalla: Senior software architect & developer, 12+ year of experience programming, 3+ years in functional programming paradigm (Haskell), Mathematics teacher (Education Systems Engineering), Multilingual (French, Italian, English, Mbo)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/didier-junior-nkalla-ehaw%C3%A9-2a40a463/

Arcel: Senior Software developer in Closure 7 + years experience, Project manager, Multilingual (French, English, Medumba)

Megan: Cameroon Team Co-Lead, Central Africa Coordination Lead, Wada core team member (Education and Event Lead), Math & Physics teacher, bilingual (French & English)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-hess-5b853292/

Wada network of resources

https://www.wada.org

Wada devs & marketing team

[AUDITABILITY]

We will measure the progress of this proposal based on the phases:

Phase 1: event attendance, and feedback

Phase 2: hackathon attendance, feedback, and scores

Phase 3: number of trainees enrolled in Wada's education program

We will measure the success of this proposal based on the phases:

Phase 1: event attendance 300+ total in attendance for 3 events

Phase 2: hackathon attendance 60+ total attendance for 3 hackathons

Phase 3: number of trainees enrolled in Wada's education program, 12+ trainees

This itself is a new proposal, however we will be working closely with the Wada Cameroon hub to continue their work on successful proposals, and they will be leading us on the education and events.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Spread-Plutus-through-Africa/381332-48088

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Clubs+hackathons-=-Cardano-adoption/381318-48088