This ICP Hub in Kenya is Empowering East Africa’s Next Generation of Blockchain Builders
Oct 15, 2024
“Africa is among the biggest consumers of blockchain technology products, and for the longest time we haven’t been building enough. ICP Hub Kenya helps our young people in Africa—which has the youngest population—to build and produce more blockchain products,” said Yvonne Kagondu, the co-founder of ICP Hub Kenya, at a CNBC interview.
When ICP Hub Kenya unveiled itself to be among the three ICP hubs in Africa in May 2023, the buzz then was focused on creating a vibrant blockchain ecosystem—a platform promising to develop the capacity of young Africans to become builders through education, collaboration, and innovation.
Something was missing, and such a hub was all the East African region needed to make all the difference for blockchain’s survival. A few years ago, an individual would resort to self-learning to be proficient in blockchain concepts and blockchain development. Now, ICP Hub Kenya has the biggest blockchain developer community in Kenya and East Africa. It has nearly 200 canisters deployed from its hub activities and hosted 15 hackathons. (“We focus on training Web2 developers to bring them on blockchain … now the focus is to convert the products and teams they’ve built into investable products and teams.”). But it has been a step back to basics, which has involved organizing over 60 events and partnering with over 20 other events—the key is to reach many people, mostly developers.
When Yvonne took over the hub in the midst of rising ICP hubs in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, she brought a singular focus to make ICP a household name in Kenya and Africa in general. Before the hub, ICP was not known in Kenya. For a company that is part of the DFinity Foundation, in which each unit and region is run independently based on a funnel model, her plan was an extreme makeover. Even more challenging, the organization has had to retool itself to operate at a low cost amid having 11 permanent staff and contracting services like PR companies, influencers, merchandise printers, and the like.
Each hub is required to do the following: evangelize, educate, incubate, and launch products. All in sequence and in a funnel. “As ICP Hub Kenya, we have successfully accomplished evangelism and education… now we move down to incubation, where we are working with Olympus,” said Yvonne. “Additionally, ICP Hubs are supported by community grants since they are community-led and driven. So as of now, you may not see projects on developer grants from most of the hubs. Especially in regions that are still trying to establish themselves in the blockchain scene. However, we have some great GitHub repos from our education sector.”
Since 2023, ICP Hub Kenya has supported multiple developer communities in Kenya, including Google Developer Groups and Google student developer groups, amongst others. It was in the first cohort of Olympus that was launched in June 2024 and has incubated 5 products. These products were funneled from the hackathons it has hosted. Going into 2025, it plans to bring more teams from different universities to build the future on the ICP blockchain. The goal: to be the most active hub globally.
Innovation is at the heart of ICP Hub Kenya. Yvonne has mirrored this blueprint strategy with an audacious approach. To achieve a broader education reach, she has introduced memethons besides the conventional hackathons,and produced projects like Astro Ape (a cross-chain memecoin platform), Fries Coins (a utility memecoin for fries’ lovers), Boina Coin (a food technology crypto coin), and the Duck Buck (the quackiest memecoin in the meme pond). She aims to motivate developers to keep pushing boundaries and setting new standards.
ICP Hub Kenya has evolved from your ordinary capacity builder to an opportunity creator. As it attempts to move ahead of the competition and stay there, creativity is critical. Every builder must understand the importance of innovation—not just for coding operations but for income generation. That’s why it has set out some of its developers to dive into the exciting world of Meme2Earn and MemeFi. Therefore, the company is moving in new directions quicker than any educator.
Photos by ICP Hub Kenya on LinkedIn
A Unique Way Forward
By now, every ICP Hub Kenya hackathon participant knows that they are putting themselves up for limitless opportunities. The African tech industry is being put on the global map; for example, its developers are participating in the 2024 UN South Africa Coding4Integrity Hackathon and making it to the finals couldn’t have made us prouder! It became evident that the hub couldn’t reach its full potential by sticking to business as usual, and a new approach was needed to drive progress.
But it is the hub’s actions in an overcrowded space that have caused a sharp turn in the right direction. Call it foresight or a last-ditch effort—no one can say for sure —but the company has made some right decisions. It has been empowering everyone, even women.
The hub unveiled another electrifying vision: “Strictly Women Only Hackathon” on 12th–17th August 2024. This was an opportunity to be part of an exclusive hackathon designed to celebrate and elevate women in the blockchain space. The disparity between genders in the blockchain was so bad, with CoinCover revealing that only 6% of blockchain CEOs were women, a stark contrast to the 17% of female CEOs in the broader technology industry.
ICP Hub Kenya rose to the occasion and united brilliant female minds from all over to collaborate, code, and create innovative solutions for a better future! It invited Women Techmakers Nairobi, She Code Africa, Power Learn Project, and Tech Sisters Kenya.
Every coding function was meant to empower the ‘girl child” to be competitive in the blockchain technology space. This sealed off the embedded hatches that have alienated them in the past. It hosted the first women-only blockchain hackathon at Moringa School.
“I’m proud to say that over 40 talented women came together, and under the mentorship and training provided by ICP Hub Kenya , they successfully developed more than 10 projects on the ICP blockchain,” stated MARY USAJI, ICP Hub’s project manager. “The future of blockchain is brighter with more women leading the way.”
Yvonne and her team created a shared-vision model for ICP development, innovation support, and entrepreneurial development. In addition to changing the status quo, it has been vocal about its plans and achievements. ICP Hub Kenya has made over 50 media appearances; some are TV features, including the leading TV station in Kenya, Citizen TV, and other leading TV and PR channels in Uganda and Rwanda.
The Hot Seat
Yvonne may not be fully appreciated by her critics ever since she agreed to be CEO of ICP Hub Kenya. But now, she has more sense that it would take radical changes and a need to attack complexity to make the hub a success. She may have underestimated both the scale of the task ahead and the significant adjustments required to implement the new strategies.
Yet—a financial economist by training—she may be uniquely suited to the role she accepted. She graduated from Strathmore University in the 2 years or so working at the hub; she has meshed in just about every function to spearhead blockchain education in the region. Yvonne recognized strategic synergies’ importance in the organization’s growth. Tbh! There aren’t many female tech founders that would have achieved what she has by now.
Photos by ICP Hub Kenya on LinkedIn
Community-Led for Community Growth
At the onset, there was an integration plan for digital and physical educational activities as the best tool to reach many young Africans. Several universities have taken part in ICP Hub Kenya’s outreach, including the Inter-University Blockchain Hackathon on January 30, 2024, which attracted 700+ brilliant minds from 21 Kenyan universities. The university tours feature fun discussions about building innovative projects on ICP and being a part of the community.
Frequently also, ICP Hub Kenya convenes Twitter spaces to discuss topics, including blockchain security, blockchain innovation, tokenization, dApps, AI and blockchain’s potential, ICP Fusion, and blockchain use cases. Each space delves into curated blockchain and tech discussions and fosters subsequent community participation. Some people can participate in governance by being neuron holders; others contribute ICP initiatives, such as local meetups, workshops, and hackathons to share knowledge, collaborate on projects, and promote the adoption of ICP.
There is a strong focus on these integrated activities to support its anchor approach of active involvement. Young people should be able to learn, build, and innovate in their own unique ways. The hub’s approach to learning mirrors the process of buying a new smartphone, where decisions are influenced not just by basic functions—like making calls or navigation—but also by the cutting-edge features and technology included. At the moment, the key to developing a holistic learning experience encompasses frequent giveaways, tokens, and contests.
Many people have a deep-seated fear of change. For ICP Hub Kenya, it’s been motivating and constructive, and its developers and community members would view it the same way. Perhaps more certainly, what we’ve seen come out of its educational programs reflects what has been going on the inside—only transformative change.
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