Qala Fellowship to train the next generation of African Bitcoin developers

Qala Fellowship has received a 0.5BTC grant from the New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) to train Bitcoin developers in Africa.

In its effort to promote and protect human rights across the globe, the HRF, a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)3 has been giving out grants totalling over $900,000 to developers and educators across the world under the Bitcoin Development Fund to support software developers who are making the Bitcoin network more private, decentralized, and resilient so that it can better serve as a financial tool for human rights activists, civil society organizations, and journalists around the world.

In the most recent funding, 10 developers and educators, including Nigeria based Qala Fellowship were gifted a total of 3.75 BTC (~150,000) to train people all around the world. As one of the beneficiaries, Qala Fellowship got a grant of 0.5 BTC (~$25,000 at time of receipt) out of the total sum.

Founded to train bitcoin and lightning developers around the continent, this grant will enable Qala Fellowship to train 10 young Africans on how to build on bitcoin and lightning network technology in their inaugural bootcamp.

Amidst the rapid adoption of cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer trading in Nigeria, the nation lags in the bitcoin technology space. The fellowship which begun this year has the single goal of solving the inclusion problem in the ecosystem by finding and growing local African talent starting with developers to build careers in the Bitcoin space.

According to one of the fellowship's lead, Bernard Parah, 'Bitcoin provides a great opportunity not just for wealth distribution but for freedom. I noticed there weren't many of us working on Bitcoin from Africa, so a couple of us decided to come together to solve this problem. Deciding to build a career in this space is one of the best decisions I have ever made because I feel a true sense of purpose every day I wake up.'

Bernard stated that his desire and that of his team members at Qala is to increase the number of Africans in the crypto space to enable them to fix money problems that affect the ecosystem.

The information made available to benjamindada.com listed Bernard Parah, CEO of Bitnob—a fast-growing African Bitcoin startup; Carla Kirk-Cohen, a software engineer at Lightning Labs, Abubakar Nur Khalil, CEO of Recursive Capital; Tim Akinbo, a long time bitcoiner and open source enthusiast, Caralie Chrisco, Operation Manager at Chaincode Labs and Content Lead at Hello Bitcoin; and Adam Jonas, Head of Educational Initiatives at Chaincode as fellowship leads.

Developers who are interested in participating in the six-month bootcamp can sign up here, selected participants will undergo on-site and virtual training that help them build scalable projects on blockchain and the lightning network.

A statement from Qala fellowship stated that the training will commence in January 2022.