Afropolitan's Grand Plan To Start A Country

you like you go try to talk to an African official today and say hey these guys are trying to start a virtual country in a digital country and blah blah blah blah they're just laughing you out the door right and the reason is yes take us as a joke like we actually want you to laugh we want you to keep on laughing because within the Laughing period we are building seriously so that by the time we reveal our leverage and our critical mass no one's laughing anymore and I think that was the similar Bitcoin strategy where today Bitcoin is taken as a serious asset but 14 years ago They're laughing you out the door

welcome to bankless where we explore the frontier of Internet money and internet Finance this is how to get started how to get better how to front run the opportunity this is Ryan Sean Adams I'm here with David Hoffman and we're here to help you become more bankless what would it look like to create a new country using crypto as a coordination technology we've explored this topic previously with Biology srinivasan he calls it the network State the idea of using crypto to create a new digital Nation it's an interesting concept of course but can it

be done as Thomas Edison once said Vision Without execution is merely hallucination So today we're talking about the execution side we have a project that's seriously trying to build a new country for Africa they have a plan using crypto they have a road map what would Africa's crypto Nation actually look like that is the topic today a few benefits and takeaways number one why the nation-state experiment has failed for black people number two why Africa needs a redrawing of lines and how web3 can help

number three why Africa is actually the best place to spawn a new network State movement number four what about crypto and crypto values are demanded in Africa what resonates the most and number five why aphropolitan the project we're talking about today thinks they can begin with an nft pfp project and end up with a country on the other side David What's significant to you about this episode in crypto we have a lot of very big ideas in fact we have so many Big Ideas

that we don't have very many people actually trying to execute on Big Ideas more supply of ideas than we have executors of big ideas but today we're talking to some people actually trying to go after one of the biggest ideas that crypto has presented the idea of building a digital nation and not stopping there and trying to actually manifest that digital nation and the values and the infrastructure that that digital Nation produces into the real world possibly one of the hardest goals that exists but there are some Tailwinds

here and I think this is a lesson that can be learned not just about the network State idea but how and why crypto is going to be adopted in general is that there are pockets of pent up demand for crypto things crypto values crypto networks crypto services and we're talking with the two founders of apropolitan about why there is so much pent-up demand across the entire con continent of Africa for something new something new from the way that people are organized and the way that

infrastructure is provided to these people as the Arc of technological adoption sweeps the globe the word leapfrogging comes about but we are entering the world of crypto networks so how do we talk about the conversation of leapfrogging with some of the products and services that crypto networks provide things like money and finance of course but also things like governance and social coordination what does the word leapfrogging mean in these contexts and why Africa is primed to LeapFrog the whole rest of the calcified world into what is perhaps the next story for web3

but also perhaps the next story for Africa yeah this episode was incredibly exciting um and the project is incredibly ambitious um of course going into this you have no idea whether they can pull it off or not but you have to admire the ambition of this thing and the world changing nature if we are actually able to use crypto as a coordination mechanism to found and start new countries what sort of world does that leave us with so David I am very excited to discuss this with you in

the debrief yeah of course obviously redrawing the map of Africa is a very ambitious Endeavor yet if we are correct on some Theses about crypto and what crypto supplies to the world and also we are understanding the current state of Africa and eche and Chica the two guests in this episode guide us through understanding that the idea is like yes it's super ambitious but the point of the point about the whole African continent is after the African continent is asking for this there's pent-up demand so yeah ambitious but the idea is that the Tailwinds behind this idea very

easily triggers it to form into a movement at least that's the bookcase there's so much more to talk about in in the debrief of the episode I mean man we're talking about the idea of web3 coming to change the landscape of we usually would follow that with web 2 but no we're talking about the landscape of countries that were that were defined in the 1880s like finally we're getting some some churn in the world uh at least this is the the ideas that are going to be laid out in front of us today that would be a very big deal if it happens of course you guys can access the debrief episode in the show notes and if

you are bankless citizen you have access to that on the bankless premium feed right now guys we're gonna get right to the episode with Chica and eche but before we do we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible and Chica youwazzi co-founders of afropolitan an ambitious project with the ultimate goal of redrawing the lines of the African continent first by starting and founding a digital nation and then moving into the world of global Nation governance and ending with getting some actual physical land in the African continent and if this sounds a

little bit like the idea of the bellagian network State then you're on the right track today on the show eche and Chica are going to guide us through why Africa is so primed to take a new shape aided by the power of web 3 and the principles that crypto networks have to offer the world chica welcome to bankless thank you for happiness a pleasure to be here so actually you and I ran into each other at a zuzalu and within a few minutes into our conversation I was immediately just Goosebumps about uh this this potential

this latent potential for both Africa but also for web three there's there's mutual interest here and I'm really just struck kind of like by The Audacity Of The Idea like you guys are you guys are trying to found a new country yeah which is you know an insane thing to say uh but in crypto I think we are all into the idea of very big very crazy ideas but what gives you what gives you guys the confidence the audacity to say that hey we're gonna found a new country and

change the shape of Africa what gives you the motivation to even even do this actually let's start with you honestly I think for me um there are a couple of buckets like I think about this it's first we're we are descendants of people who did more with less so it's like we owe it to ourselves to do more and more and I think it's the technology today for us to do way more right so I don't think 40 50 years ago like when you take examples of other states that have been formed within 50 or 60 years I mean think about

America right they were doing this without like the internet it's like hey what a new country they had to write pamphlets The Federalist Papers had to wait for it to get decimate disseminated throughout the rest of the world um but I think for us it's we actually also have no choice it's existential for where we're from right it's like one of The Inspirations for us was when Balaji said because the brand new is Unthinkable we fight over the old and we're like huh like it that just seems

as a quote that encapsulates how we feel as Africans and what is it going to take for us to really transcend right and then the internet enables us today to really dream that big because it it acts as an equalizer if this was 40 50 years ago and we're talking about Network State we're still getting locked out the room now but we're not getting laughed out as much because of the tools that exist today so I think that it's just the right timing and the tools do exist for us to be able to build for that discrimination

perspective here yeah I I spent around 2000 about eight years in Nigeria and I this is my second company right um and I remember how frustrated I was because I was running an HR software company and obviously it was a need and because of literally government and governance it was very difficult to get it off the ground and get it to the scalability that it needs um and I'm sure we're

going to talk about this later but there's a lot of data sets that say that Africa is the next Frontier um it's still relatively unexplored it is the youngest continent in the world um and probably in about 50 years um probably three or four out of ten people you meet are going to be African right um and so we have to get this right and going back to what she said if ex-official this point uh right um so for me I just feel like as someone who actually lives in Lagos and saw all the potential for all the different Tech

Founders trying to build something and literally a lot of times they were stuck and they were unable to scale because of governance uh I feel that we need something that's going to change and I don't think it's going to be building a new app or building a new technology I actually think we need to change the foundation of governance and how Africa is operating today chica what do people say when you tell them that you're like you're trying to found a country what's that what's their reaction right because like in in David was saying crypto we're used to Big audacious ideas but yeah I

mean to the mainstream to the public that just sounds crazy yeah like what do people say when you say that so I typically get two responses right um so when I say we are looking to find a position a country it's normally like a like they've paused for a second and they're trying to reflect on like did I just hear what you said a digital country okay and then it's like okay walk me through that what does it actually look like and to be honest I

haven't had anyone write out like laugh but I do feel that you know there are people that are like that sound a little far-fetched you know and I I feel that once we start going into the details and it's like okay this makes sense or I I understand or sometimes you know they end the conversation like I still don't get it but I can see why this is needed right so I do feel that there's a lot of Education that is needed and I think also when you start sharing historical references of how other countries were formed it really helped people to really

start to understand like oh this actually is possible because this is how other countries have formed in the past yeah so so of course uh We've acknowledged then that this is a big audacious idea and we're gonna you know walk into kind of the how um but before we get to sort of the how let's talk about the why and let's talk about maybe the state of Africa today at the afropolitan website you guys have published a Manifesto which I think is um is fantastic and I'm gonna read a line out of it because um these two paragraphs really really

spoke to me scarcity weakness poverty wherever we look and wherever we are Africans worldwide are subjects not citizens access to Opportunities scarce security is not guaranteed for the most part life is just about surviving not thriving the nation-state experiment has failed for black people worldwide it has yielded nothing but poverty genocide police brutality ethnic Strife inflation weak government and the failure of our ecosystems what do you guys mean when

you say the nation-state has failed for Africa at Jay what does that mean so specifically when I think about that um we drew inspiration from like the US founding fathers so Anthony Hamilton and Federalist ones basically says is it possible for societies of men to form a new government through reflection and choice or are we forever destined to depend on our governance through accident and force and so for us we're like no modern day nation state in Africa was created through reflection

and choice it was always mostly through accident and force and so when we say the nation-state experiment has failed we're saying the way that that experiment was conducted in our African context was never actually foundationally sound right and it is obviously Phil because it was always going to be a feature for it to fail right when it's a bug what it looks like is countries like Singapore or Vietnam or the Vietnamese War ended in 1975 Nigeria as a nation got its independence in 1960 so that's a full 15 years after

but look at Nigeria today look at Vietnam today right night and day Singapore the Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew used to come to Africa to try to draw some inspiration for Singapore because it was still a Backwater State look at Singapore today look at a lot of the African nations today let's not even talk about the UAE right in in 1990 it was a sand desert literally look at where they are today look at where Africa a lot of African countries are today so when we speak specifically to the nation state experiment has failed we're saying we have not seen the benefits of it and in our Theory it's

it's because we never actually get got to reflect and choose right and that has been the foundational underpinning for why it has felt I want to uh go a little bit into the world of history because I think a a theme that we're going to bring out in this show is that there is the belief here in the anthropolitan movement is that there's latent potential in Africa and that has been building for more than decades for like centuries and so also you know bankless listeners are probably

going to be needing some some help some education about the history of Africa in order to fully understand what we're talking about here so maybe we can go back to the Berlin Conference in in the 1880s uh what was the Berlin Conference what did it do and what was the net result as it how has it defined Africa yeah so the Berlin Conference was a conference organized by like five or six of the major European powers so you're talking about countries like England France Spain Italy Belgium right and they were basically meeting together to

basically decide on how Africa was going to be divided and shared right so all of them were basically having in fighting between each other so I think the German Chancellor basically called this conference and says okay this is how we're going to um divide and Africa among ourselves right and this was in 1884 I believe and it was called the Scramble for Africa and so by by 1904 at least 90 percent of most of the African land had actually been divided and and then colonized by a

lot of these um uh European powers and that set the foundation again for our quote-unquote nation state experiment right because you can imagine the Berlin Conference there sitting in Berlin drawing lines on a map that are actually affecting real people on the ground so you have tribes that were you know together who got divided through those Maps you had ethnicities and religions that were not necessarily supposed to be together who just got you know thrown together take Nigeria for example like we got Amalgamated like 734 ethnicities

just put into one map and then you're like hey get like you guys are forced to work together right so you're you see that um the consequences of that conference playing out over time and that has compounded We Believe for the African um story right so again the Berlin Conference a group of European powers came together how are we gonna share this African cake of a consonant he divided it into pieces everyone got a piece but the way those pieces were divided were not really in the best

interests of other people on the ground and we have suffered the consequences of that even until today yeah and just to really drive this point home uh who were the African Representatives at this conference [Laughter] no none there were no African Representatives at this conference and I think that has really been what has played out for Africa in general like the world always has a plan for Africa and Africa really has a plan for the world right and I think that that's what we're looking to change even with the afropolitan network today right and the

Berlin Conference are the lines that we see on the map drive to dance yes and so till that has persisted 1880 to now so 140 years yes that has defined legally the legal jurisdictions of Africans but has been in complete disregard for actual cultural boundaries and differences and so understanding this context moving forward I think is going to be key in this episode but there's also another element that chica I want to I want to get your help on this word diaspora I think is is a very

foundational to this story can you define this word diaspora because we're going to need it moving forward yes and so I think it's important to uh lay out two things so number one many countries have a diaspora right and so for example China for example they have a group of people who have left China and they are in the U.S they are in Europe they're in Latin America so many different uh countries or ethnicities actually have a diaphor so I think that's important to uh put that there as a foundation so when we talk about

afropolitan what we're actually um a huge part of our community is the African diagram and to specifically Define that these are people who are black American right so they are in the U.S they can be afro-latina or Latino right and so they may be in part of uh Latin America actually one of the biggest African communities outside of Africa is in Brazil right um and in fact you will find a lot of Europe a culture

which is actually belonged to Nigeria so there's a huge African diaspora in Latin America we are also in Europe we are in Asia you know we're in all parts of the world so it's essentially Africans in different parts of the world that are outside of Africa um that are considered the Opera and it's actually quite um there's different types I think also a lot of people think we're all black and we're not um if you look at Northern Africa um they you know they have different um ethnicities um some of them might be Arab um and then even to be honest if

you look at at South Africa as well there are people who are um from Dutch origin um who have now become South African and some of them have left and they consider themselves part of the African diaspora so not only are we multi-faceted as far as where we spread across the world but also um ethnicity wise we are quite diverse and they're part of the African diaspora even though they're not living within the the nation-state and boundaries of Africa in all of the countries represented in Africa be because they

subscribe to the African nation let's say one of the foundational I think ideas um for me and kind of understanding this concept of a digital nation was uh when biology came onto the bankless show this is I think his second episode on Bank list we'll include a link in the show notes guys so so you can get up to speed on his concept of a digital Nation because I think it's very much influenced the afropolitan movement but um the the the term nation state has two

separate words inside of it like the first is nation and the second is State and nation is uh um separate than the idea of state so a nation is a shared culture a shared set of values it's almost akin to a kind of a tribe all right and so um that is the actual like cultural identity of a given uh people group right and that is separate from the the concept in the term state so state is is almost like the pro protocol that is the

set of laws and regulations so um the U.S Constitution that that is part of the the nation-state protocol of the United States but it's different than the concept of of nation and what part part of what you're saying I think is yeah you know uh the history of Africa is really this division in terms of arbitrary borders and it's the state type protocol without kind of the nation and so this is um I I think an important concept for for people to to really understand is when

we open up the the idea of um entering into a new nation apparatus people don't have to live in the same geography people have don't have to live within the same state uh boundaries we can redefine the state boundaries to be something else and that's what you're doing here with the afropolitan movement how many people are in the African diaspora so there are 150 million people worldwide if it was a country it'll be the 10th largest country in the world

so we're talking about an absolutely like a very large population set and and growing very fast yes extremely large and I think something thing also interesting is that number one it's a group that even in Africa they have been trying to figure out and they've been asking themselves how do we pack into this Market because the interesting thing about the African diaspora is many of them come home right whether it's through the December you know we call this the homecoming um Ghana has officially labeled it as the year of

return and we're going to talk about this later and what's interesting about the year of return is that not only has for example Ghana opened it up to ghanaians and then diaspora but literally the President also has opened up to either black Americans and said yes you know for you know obvious reasons you have left but we're opening this home back to you and you can come here and you have a place and you have you know a structure and so I think the African asper is quite it's quite big but also the African Union has been

trying to figure out how can they Connect into this group and I think also because of the cultural elements that are happening now through afrobeats through fashion through film um and you can see this on Netflix you can see this on you know a different concerts I think there's a lot of interest in this specific group as well can we talk a little bit about the the solution you're proposing here and I think in order to to get to uh explaining aphropolitan we have to explain the concept of a network State and uh actually where were you when you

first kind of heard about this concept and uh you know what impact did it have and maybe could you help Define it for listeners yeah no definitely so I remember Balaji releases his first article called how to start a new country in April 2021 and I was in the car Senegal I remember like I'm up at 5 00 am reading this and my mind is blown I think like I said a particular quote that really hooked me was what he said because the brand new is Unthinkable we fight over the old I basically saw where

Balaji was talking about because prior to that we had done the year of return in 2019 where about a million plus people from the dashboard came to Ghana and then in 2020 because of covid we pivoted into media but through a social audio app called Clubhouse so in clubhouse Alpha Bolton and between Ayan Chico we built a community online community on there of about 200 000 people collectively so in 2021 when Balaji says hey he's proposing this idea of a network State he defines it as a highly aligned online community with a

capacity for Collective action that's able to crowdfund territory around the world and eventually gain diplomatic recognition from pre-existing States it's a mouthful but how we basically broke it down was to say to ourselves okay when we were running our clubhouse communities we showed a capacity for Collective action we funded things like the Ethiopian Refugee crisis during the Ethiopian Civil War we we funded the police brutality protest in Nigeria and we organized around Clubhouse so we were able to even send Bitcoin to the the

protesters in Nigeria and we organized that through a highly aligned online community and so when he then said okay you're able to crowdfund territory around the world we basically liking that to us bringing a million plus people from the diaspora to Ghana right and they were actually physically on land um and then he says um the next part is like gaining diplomatic recognition from three existing States we're not there yet obviously that's where we're working but to me it was like these are building blocks right like they're they're proof of Concepts right if you start to break it into it's each Elemental um um

identity you're like it's not that far-fetched like you've already shown a capacity for Collective action you've already shown a possibility to have a highly aligned online community right you you need to crowdfund territory around the world right and you can start off as something as simple as like potential B works right in different places in the world and then you build up those uh Chinatown type models as you scale and then the pre-existing um State recognition is the one that you're really optimizing for because then you ensure your sovereignty at scale so that

that was our definition from the network state there are a few elements that I want to pull out of apologies Network State idea that I think can carry Us in through into the next bit of the conversation but balaji's like Network Tech idea came from like potentially like aligning like-minded and like like cultured people and some of the examples would be like uh let's make a network state that has the freedom of of research in certain like a network State without the FDA and that would allow for certain people to do certain things and but he

kind of gave or like people talked about the network States in very narrow senses but we we were just going through like some of the what we're calling the latent potential of Africa as a continent and the the other theme that I think has that's been um used about Africa and his relationship with technology is this word called like leapfrogging right like there was no landlines ever established in Africa it just went straight until uh cellular devices right and so I think perhaps what we're talking about here and and what the afroopolitan movement is trying to do is we're trying to LeapFrog

governance you know [Laughter] the idea is like why can we do this whereas like yo if we make a network State that's about like uh you know freedom to innovate across like FDA regulations that's one thing but what about the freedom to be a nation that the African continent has never had before yes and so I I think that this is kind of the energy that that we're tapping into and so yeah maybe you guys can talk about just like connect the

need of Africa to have a voice and the solutions that a network State at least proposes as a potential path forward chica you want to take us home on this one yeah so I feel like number one you know there's many problems like we could be here all day talk about that I will talk about something that I think is probably the most relatable um and it's something that we not that we necessarily shared we're in the same space with dissolute right um so Africans having the just as much

Mobility as an American right and I feel that um today in Africa there are many African citizens who have difficulties not only being able to travel in Europe in America right because the Visa is quite long um and to be honest quite the meaning of all the different documents they require as an African to travel to many of these countries but even within Africa right um so for example if uh Nigerian wants

to travel to Zanzibar as an American I can show up to Zanzibar right now and I get in right all I got to do is if it's on arrival and Nigerian actually has to wait a month to three months right yeah yeah we actually were supposed to go to the same for South Africa yeah South Africa so we were supposed to travel to Zanzibar and basically because of uh the Nigerian passport we basically half of our time that we're supposed to be in Denver with Ben still waiting in Kenya

to get our Visa back right um and so there's a lot of just like challenges even with mobility and I think kind of the bigger issue here is that Africa needs to trade within each other right in order for us to get to our full potential we have to be able to do things among each other so I feel that there's a voice that needs to be had um when it comes to just simple Mobility like I just want to leave Nigeria and fly into London like as simple as that is and most people can just wake up and do that most a lot of Africans cannot

right um and so we're hoping that as anthropolitan we're already having many conversations with different government entities around right what does a Visa look like for acropolitans right and just giving that simple ability to have move around right um so I think there's many other things we could talk about but that's just the one that comes top of Mind especially because me and AJ travel so much and it's something that's constantly top of mind for us yeah the the um bargaining power that yeah uh cohered

Africa uh could get from this I think is is what we're really going after and yeah really This falls into the category of what I see the this movement going towards is trying to give Africans a voice for the first time they didn't have it in 1880 when the lines were drawn uh in in Europe about Africa yeah and and perhaps the African voice has been like robbed of being actually able to speak because the the tribal boundaries and the tribal groups have been divided and that it's been there's

been a friction a lack of resonance between the legal topology and the cultural tribes and so how do you see this whole like Pursuit of a network State movement and the relationship of Africans having a voice actually I don't want to one yeah so and I think you you really nailed it on the head David so again it's about organizing around shared values and purpose right so um a lot of tribes infight among each other saying hey you're not for my tribe so I can't vote for you right but no

African State can point to the benefits that anyone has gotten from voting from somebody who's something to try right like it's not like oh hey we're from the same place I vote for you now we have access to facilities or Healthcare or whatever it's not working so now it's like how do we go back to now organizing around shared values and purpose and this cuts across borders right so I think when we read balaji's Network State the first critical part was that highly aligned online community like hey guys we're we're not aligning just based on race or tribe or sex or gender we're