Africa DAO

We would like to thank everyone in the Harmony community for the lively discussion held over the past few days in our Telegram group. To reiterate, we’re grateful for your patience, and please accept our apologies for not having responded earlier as some of us are sick and/or traveling home from Denver.

Lively discussions, when done respectfully, can only reinforce us as a community. We would like to express our respect for everyone who has contributed to the conversation and our interest in the opinions you’ve shared. Having taken some time to reflect, we would like to share our thoughts on the discussion thus far.

Name change
We acknowledge that the decision to change the name of the DAO should have been put to a community vote (rather than only voting on the part of the governors). Despite our best intentions, the process by which we made the change was hasty, even though it should be emphasized that the name change has no implications for our mandate. Our activities and mission are clearly defined in the approved roadmap, which has not changed.

We would like to reiterate that the objective of the name change was to disambiguate our DAO among the variety of DAOs that are now arising within the broader Harmony Africa community. Just as important, one of our original goals, apart from increasing the adoption of Harmony across the African continent and unique to our DAO, is to focus on "blockchain for good” activities (as defined in the proposal). That is, we aim to achieve a positive social impact in everything we do. This is why the activities have a social component at their core (gaming for good, gender in blockchain, etc.). This is not necessarily the case with other Africa-focused DAOs in the Harmony community, which might have different noble objectives (validation, technical improvements, community growth, etc).

We agree with your suggestion that a community vote should resolve this misunderstanding. We propose that a vote (everyone with a non-zero $ONE balance gets to vote) take place next week after we have held a community discussion on the topic. We welcome name suggestions from the community from today until March 1 (end of day). Potential names that have already been put forth include:

  1. Africa DAO (original name)

  2. Impact +

  3. Impact + for Africa

  4. (Your proposal here. The above list is just an initial list of suggestions. Community input is critical.)

The active discussion in our Telegram group has also led us to reflect on the essential importance of communication and accountability in community governance, as we evolve as a DAO and as a community. We commit to doing a better job of communicating clearly and proactively about the decision-making process, and to involving the community more directly in decision-making going forward, and we’re grateful for your constructive feedback along these lines.

Governance
Good governance is a central pillar of any DAO. During the last few months, we have developed internal guidelines and tools (travel, financial, and marketing/events policies). Guidelines ensure we work in a coordinated, systematic, professional manner. While some of these guidelines have already been posted on the Harmony forum (see above), others will be posted as soon as they are completed. We will continue to keep the community informed of all job postings, details of the activities, etc. via our Telegram, Harmony page and Twitter account.

However, we also acknowledge that we must continuously improve our governance mechanisms and that we can always do better. To this end, we are designing tools and have planned actions that will increase engagement with the community. Specific short-term tools and actions include the following:

  • We recently created a Discord server where we have a channel specific to DAO governance: Africa DAO. We encourage you to join, share your thoughts and opinions, and contribute to the conversation.
  • We have created a Snapshot instance that will allow us to have transparent community voting.
  • We have an upcoming vote to select which upcoming community-led meet-ups the DAO should support (thank you very much to all those who have participated!).
  • The community will continue to be invited to apply for new, compensated, non-governor positions (as we did for the Hackathon-lead position, dev trainer position, etc.). As Harmony clearly stated in Denver, there is so much to do that to have maximum impact the DAO needs the support of all community members, not just the governors. For example, @Symphony.One (the Nigeria DAO) is doing great work engaging with its community. We would love to pick your brain and learn from all of you!
  • We will publish all of our expenses next month. All expenses have been professionally documented and accounted for, as we are fortunate to count among the governors a senior finance manager with 15+ years of experience.

We are sure that more can be achieved. For example, we are currently analyzing DAO tools such as Aragon, Mirror, etc. Please keep in mind that this is the first time that the majority of our governors have participated in a DAO. Consequently, any constructive feedback is welcome. Please contact us directly or on the DAO Governance Discord channel (see link above) if you have any suggestions.

Next steps on programming
While acknowledging our shortcomings and that there is still much to achieve, it is also important to celebrate the DAO’s achievements to date as we are under the impression that some members of the community who have participated in the discussion are not aware of them (for future reference, our work has been published systematically on talk.harmony.one as well as on our Telegram channel). In less than three months, we have met with the Kenyan government and have been able to conduct five meet-ups in Nairobi and Mombasa that have engaged 436 people including:

  • On December 21, we held our first showcase of African projects for the global community. The showcase included 8 innovative projects on how to apply blockchain and Web3 platforms across Africa;

  • On January 14, the first “Gender Meet-up” in Nairobi took place live from Usiku Games and provided a blockchain sneak-peek to the incredibly talented women of Kenya. The Meetup was geared towards developers interested in potentially transitioning to Web3, talented artists thinking about minting NFTs, those who want to understand how blockchain can create social impact, and other curious community members;

  • On January 25, we co-hosted an interactive workshop on gaming development and its contribution to positive social impact. Web2 gaming developers along with curious potential creators attended live and online exploring together the new Web3 environment; and

  • On February 19, the DAO was part of a high-profile panel at ETHDenver with key speakers such as Kweku Mandela and Princess Sara from Sierra Leone. It is safe to say that Harmony considers our DAO as a success model, in spite of the improvements we need to make.

  • Supporting other DAO proposals such as Harmony’s Nigeria DAO, led by Cheta.

  • On March 3rd the DAO will be part of a Blockchain training for journalists taking place in Nairobi, which will include an introduction to Harmony and a step-by-step workshop on how to onboard.

We are just as excited about our upcoming activities in the next few weeks which include many more events, trainings, and hackathons, such as:

  • The DAO is collaborating with Microsoft, Polygon, and Harmony to design an intensive course to support talented Web2 developers in transitioning into Web3. The training will be supported by top developers and will coordinate discussions with key industry players.
  • On April 8-10, we will conduct our first Web3 “gender hackathon” in Nairobi. The hackathon will introduce the Web3 and experiment with building real solutions on the network. Teams of developers, visionaries and technical experts will design and build digital products, tools and apps that can be used to improve gender equality in Africa. This will occur in collaboration with gender organizations.
  • Community-led meet-ups will take place after they are selected by the community (as described above).

Please reach out to us on our Discord if you think you can support our activities in any way, particularly if you are based in Nairobi. As a reminder, the mandate for our trial period covers Kenya. Activities will be extended to other countries if Harmony approves a second phase.

The Governors and open governor positions
This first cohort of the DAO governors, with expertise in Social Impact, include a combination of men and women who are convinced of the benefits that Harmony’s technology could play in achieving social change in Africa. The team is made up of international development experts, creative directors, finance managers, blockchain experts, and political scientists. (Full profiles of the governors available above).

The governors have worked together very well during the past few months. Unfortunately, our Kenyan governor had to resign for personal reasons (he also resigned from all other Harmony-related DAOs and projects, not only this DAO). Another governor has decided to resign in order to offer his position to someone who has more time to commit to the DAO, a gesture that we understand and appreciate.

We thus have two upcoming votes for two open governor positions. We encourage members of the community to apply, particularly if you have experience in governance or community engagement. We would be particularly pleased if the selected new governors are African (and potentially women, so that we may achieve gender parity, as we currently have two women as governors). Cultural diversity will enrich us as a group.

The election period will start on March 1 and the vote will take place until March 7 (end of day).

We are still working out the details of exactly how and when the governor elections will be carried out. We are still in a trial period and as such have been primarily focused upon organizing the best possible events, and have thus not yet determined a specific plan. Your feedback on the fairest, most open, and most transparent way to carry out these elections is essential.

Final comments
We would like to thank you all for your time, your constructive input, and for making this such a great community, where positive criticism is and always will be welcome and appreciated. Thank you also to those who have enquired about our health. We are all now on the path of recovery. Please also remember that we are still in a trial period and that we are learning together as we go. While we may not always get things right, we promise to always work hard to learn and improve. As mentioned, the DAO concept is new to many of us, and we recognize that we still have a great deal to understand about decentralized organizations. We look forward to your support, to achieve our goals together in Africa. Thanks for your time and patience.

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