On Wednesday 18 December 2024, thirty-five people spent the morning at the Musée des civilisations de Dschang, in Cameroon's West Region. The building is a museum of culture and history. For two hours it also held a conversation about money, technology and trust.
The session was called "Les cryptos sont-elles une arnaque ? Blockchain, potentiel et impact en Afrique", which means "Are cryptos a scam? Blockchain, potential and impact in Africa". It ran from 10:00–12:00. Sizo (SIZO Earth Tomorrow), a Giiyo partner in Dschang, organised it. The event was Cardano-branded.
Who facilitated
Three people facilitated the morning: Dongmo Kifack Walter, Maureen Wepngong and Dzubang Joseph Mermoz. Maureen Wepngong is Founder & President of Giiyo Foundation. Dzubang Joseph Mermoz is Giiyo Foundation's Technical Adviser. Giiyo Tech is an initiative of Giiyo Foundation.
A question the title refused to dodge
The title did not treat the doubt as a foolish question. For many people, crypto does not arrive first as a class or a product launch. It arrives as an offer: put a little money in, and it will multiply. When someone asks whether crypto is a scam, they are often describing an offer they have already seen, or one a friend has already passed on.
Waving that question away does not make anyone safer. The useful thing is to take it seriously and then separate the parts. Some of what travels under the name crypto really is a scam. The technology those schemes lean on is not the same thing. Neither is the work of people trying to build something that can be checked.
What the two hours covered
The facilitators kept the morning to three topics.
The first was myths about crypto. A great deal of what people think they know, hopeful or frightening, comes from headlines and from promises. It does not come from a plain account of how the technology works. The session set out to replace some of those stories with that plainer account.
The second was how to spot scams. This was the practical part. A person who cannot tell a real project from a scheme that pays the early arrivals with money from the people who come later is not protected by a lecture about blockchain. The excitement becomes another way to lose savings.
The third was blockchain uses in Africa. Once the get-rich-quick noise is set aside, there are still serious things to discuss. Records that more than one person can verify. Transparency, where a system is otherwise closed. And who gets to take part in tools that have usually been designed somewhere else.
The room, and the page that is still up
Thirty-five people came. Sizo organised the gathering at the museum. Dongmo Kifack Walter, Maureen Wepngong and Dzubang Joseph Mermoz shared the facilitation.
The original event page is still on Luma: https://lu.ma/9aatc7x9
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Giiyo Tech
Content Team
The Giiyo Technologies content and communications team.
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