Lokole and Cardano Integration

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

We have built a solar charged portable off/online server device called box Lokole Numerique, which will give Cardano Ecosystem the golden opportunity to reach out to the world unconnected populations.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Group of Open Source developers, software engineers, coders and electronic technicians.Using Python, Microsoft Azure, Flask, GitHub, RPI.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

The primary purpose of the Box Lokole Numerique is to minimize the amount of data that is required to be transferred over an available internet connection which thereby reduces cost of bandwidth on users and allows them to combine monetary resources to achieve better economies of scale when purchasing bandwidth.

The users will need devices that can run a web browser to connect to Box Lokole Numerique and run locally hosted webmail and web apps which are actually offline so all server or database calls are free. Regularly the Lokole will call the cloud to sync mail files, database changes or web app source code updates using a compressed and encrypted SSH tunnel with appropriate authentication.

Lokole device will be shipped ready to use

When Lokole device is turned on either by its internal battery pack or external power, it creates a WIFI network which expands to 30 meters radian. Using any WIFI capable device, such as iPad, smart phone, laptop user connects to Lokole network. Once connected, user opens web browser and type lokole.ca on the address bar. When user presses enter, the Lokole home page displays on the screen with two tabs at the bottom of the screen; REGISTER and LEARN MORE tabs. Click REGISTER to create an account which gives access to start using Lokole and have access to network. To register is very simple, it takes only 3 items to fill up; name, password and password verify. Click LEARN MORE, to read about Lokole origin, operations and the team behind this project

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Box Lokole Numerique is an Offline Portable Web and Email Network server which runs on a single board computer to provide an Internet experience when offline in remote regions of developing countries around the world where data costs are prohibitive to the low income population. locally host web-apps connect regularly to the central cloud server and send/receive compressed and encrypted data package for relay or routing. Ease of use and minimal training is key to the success of deployment in areas without technical admin skills. We have already figured out this part and it works with our current device.

Cardano Ecosystem implementation:

Now for the purpose of this challenge we plan to have Box Lokole Numerique run a shareable Cardano client web application where multiple individual users would be able to connect to it and create their personal wallet offline, using their smart phone or a shareable computer in a lab. Box Lokole Numerique will connect periodically at a scheduled time to the Cardano Node in the cloud exchange transactions. This way the communities with who cannot access internet individually because they are poor, they can still be able to participate in Cardano Ecosystem and improve their socio-economic life. We are doing this already with the email application "Lokole email" we built ourself.

Working within Africa creates many challenges:

◦ Poor infrastructure, both for electricity and telecommunications.

◦ Central Africa is subjected to extreme heat which could affect equipment.

◦ High poverty means additional security concerns. In the DRC the price of 1GB of data is about $1.00 (Vodacom), almost as much as the average daily income $1.10 (World Bank).

◦ The user base has very little computer experience, meaning that the solution must be

designed with good Human and Computer Interaction (HCI) heuristics

To address the challenges and ensure the high availability of the system, the OPWEN (Lokole)

system had the following properties:

• Good attention to HCI.

• A “lock down” approach to both hardware and software security.

• A triple redundant power system (battery, electricity, solar)

• A flexible communication system (wireless and wired)

• Affordability. (With Lokole, the cost can be only $0.01 per person, the same price of 50 grams of Cassava (FAO) in the DRC).

ASCODERU has guaranteed high availability by designing a system made of widely available and easily replaceable parts. Thus, most hardware faults will not require specialized repair and the system can be restored quickly.

It is our opinion that ASCODERU has created a sufficient system for its purpose. They provide a robust, low cost and low maintenance system which can be installed quickly and used by a non-tech-savvy user base.

Lokole/Cardano Networks targets Africa market, because its technology and operations is appropriate. robust and responds to the challenges mentioned here above.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

There are very few risks from a technical perspective for this project:

(1) Theft or equipment damage from climate

Our hardware is very cheap and modular so that if any particular part fails, it can easily be replaced. The components will be placed in a special case and tropicalize to eliminate damage from the environment. Our hardware will work on solar panels with attached battery packs. The battery protects our hardware from damage if there is a power surge.

We address the issue of theft in two ways. First of all, the Lokole hardware will be community owned which naturally deters theft via social control and shared ownership. Secondly, we also have the option of stationing the Lokole hardware in supervised public places such as health centers, libraries or schools.

(2) Cellular network failures

In the rare case that the cellular network fails, we have the option of falling back to satellite for data transfer. Given that cellular networks are fairly reliable in much of sub-Saharan Africa, we will only develop this solution if network failures become a frequent issue in the areas where we deploy our project as the added satellite communication hardware will drastically increase deployment costs.

(3) Security and data privacy

The Lokole project handles sensitive user data like emails. As such, security and privacy are a concern for us. We address this risk by refusing to reinvent the wheel and instead leveraging battle-tested cloud technologies for data storage (e.g. Azure Blob Storage), email integration (e.g. Send Grid) and local data storage (e.g. Flask-Security). All integrations are protected via a standard pre-shared secret approach. Our software is developed by an experienced engineer (ex-Amazon, now Microsoft) following industry best practices.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

First 3 months:

consultation between Lokole system software developers and Cardano Ecosystem developers to share and learn how both topologies work.

Second 3 months:

Prepare the tools needed to tackle the integration project.

Planning and schedule

Third 3 months:

Lokole software developers build, test and debugger the system and deliver the MVP product to the public to use.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Engineer salary       $35/hr for 6 months = $33600

Project Coordinator    $35/hr for 6 months = $33600

Total Fund requested for 6 months        = $67200

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Nzolantima Swasisa (Nzola) , and I was born and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Because of my passion for technology, at a young age I started taking electronics communications courses. Since then, I built an entire academic and working career in the field. For 19 years I worked for the Christian organization Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) in 6 different countries; DRC, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique. Now employed by the Canadian National Defense Department.

While working at MAF, I became aware of the lack of telecommunication infrastructures in rural communities and I begun to refurbish old radio communications to help establish new communication systems.

In the late 90’s, I started implementing a radio email system which consisted of sending emails via radio waves. When cell phones then became popular in Africa, I decided to build an offline mobile email server. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nzola-swasisa-11806534/

Laura Barluzzi is a self-taught developer and passionate advocate for positive change and justice with a MSc in International Development. Laura has dedicated 10 years of her life supporting local and international NGOs. Before supporting Ascoderu, she is a Software Engineer at AdBlock. https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-barluzzi/

Clemens Wolff is a full-stack software developer who spent much of his life in Togo, Mali and Zambia and is now based in Miami-Fort Lauderdale Arear, USA. He honed his software chops working on large-scale projects at Amazon, Microsoft, at Noom Inc. and on open-source projects such as the sharing platform yunity. Clemens now drives the development of all technical aspects of Ascoderu's projects. https://www.linkedin.com/in/clemens-wolff/

Shaun Bathgate is a Senior Software Engineer at Atreides Caseri Inc.

Full-stack software engineer with experience in product development and automation technologies. https://www.linkedin.com/in/s-bathgate/

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Yes, for sure. Because our proposal is technology dependent. This means, as the technology evolves, we need to keep up with it.

In fact, we do have more idea to include in the Box Lokole Numerique, such as Cardano Crypto Currency monitoring and many other applications to help the unconnected communities to experience online applications on an offline affordable mode.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

The most efficient way to properly asses the impact of our service is to consult the users of the Lokole device and email app themselves. This mainly because our service is a general-purpose tool that can positively impact the life of people in many ways. So our assessment will be:

(1) Through our GitHub page: https://github.com/ascoderu/lokole/issues

(2) Check stats of our Lokole web app users (How many account created? How many are actively used? etc.). So that we can measure the number of people using the Lokole and infer the increase in the number of people using ICTs/emails in remote areas of the most impoverished places in Africa.

(3) In order to clearly understand the direct cause-effect relationship between our Lokole access and positive social impact, we will conduct a digital email-survey among our Lokole users. In this way, we can learn and deeply understand how our solution has improved their lives in health, education, economy and social matters. Note that no one could conduct such surveys without our technology enabling us to distribute the survey efficiently via email!

(4) We will keep in regular communication with the ambassadors that are running Lokole-kiosks in order to see the economics of this business-model and the positive impact for the administrator and local community. (How many people are using the service on any given day? Why do people go to the kiosk and pay for the usage? How much money does the operator make from the business?)

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

There are multiple ways in which our innovation is going to impact people’s lives.

Firstly, our project empowers everyone who is impaired by the poor communication infrastructure in rural areas:

(1) The student who has to walk to access a school can participate in distance education via email.

(2) The ill who has to travel far to visit a clinic can receive a diagnosis from a remote doctor.

(3) Organizations in remote areas can send attachments to their headquarters instead of having to travel to deliver documents by hand.

(4) Local entrepreneurs can grow their business by reaching a wider captive market.

(5) Local entrepreneurs can create income generating businesses by establishing low upfront cost tele-center kiosks to provide email and vital information to the public.

(6) The young and strong rural populations that migrates to the cities to look for non-existent jobs can stay to develop their villages (see reference at: https://goo.gl/zY2jBI).

Secondly, in the international development community it is believed that access to efficient ICTs (such as emails) is very significant for the people and for sustainable development “beyond survival”. For instance, Kofi Annan highlighted that: “The capacity to receive, download and share information through electronic networks, the freedom to communicate freely across national boundaries -- these must become realities for all people”. (quote from: https://goo.gl/uOcrzQ))

The UN sustainable development agenda also calls out the importance of access to communication technology in goal 9: “Bridging this digital divide is crucial to ensure equal access to information and knowledge, as well as foster innovation and entrepreneurship.” (quote from: https://goo.gl/lR5H48))

Similarly, the World Bank also states that ICT “provides economic opportunities to both urban and rural populations.” (See at: https://goo.gl/nY8uZj).

My Lokole project helps in all these areas!

Thirdly, between 2013-2015, the field-testing of our proof-of-concept deployment enabled us to prove that our innovation does really bring about meaningful positive impact by solving a real problem for people living and working in rural DRC. In this regard:

(1) The Basankusu community, in the Equateur province, to this day still regularly ask us when they’ll be able to purchase a new version of the device.

(2) Already many non-governmental organizations in the DRC are keen to purchase the Lokole to make their operations more efficient. Some of these organizations are CADELU (community development projects regarding school, agriculture and rural clinics), INPP (a country-wide institute for professional training) and OCHA (coordination of humanitarian efforts under the UN).

Consequently, we have already the proof that our product positively impacts people’s lives by addressing real problems: people and organizations are willing to pay for our product!

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This proposal is the variation of the "Lokole Education Centre in DR Congo" project, funded in Challenge 7

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384941

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

GOAL 9: “Bridging this digital divide is crucial to ensure equal access to information and knowledge, as well as foster innovation and entrepreneurship.”