Yesterday, 13th August 2018 the Center of Excellence in Internet of Things (ACEIoT) in collaboration with Blockchain EXE, the largest Blockchain tech community in Japan hosted a 5day training from 13th -17th August at UR-CST. The objective of course is to give more exposure to Use-cases of blockchain and hands-on experiences for building open, low-cost, sustainable blockchain based solutions. The 5 days comprehensive Blockchain Training Course targets experts from Public and Private Institutions including Academia who are interested in understanding the blockchain potentials –how does blockchain work, blockchain basics, programming and its applications with real examples.

Prof Santhi presenting the background of ACEIoT

Blockchain is a distributed database technology and it is far more than just Bitcoin. It has applications across finance, healthcare, media, government and other sectors and innovative uses are appearing every day. For example, some health-related blockchain products that are in development, Connecting Care which tracks the progress of patients after they leave the hospital, and Health Nexus, which aims to provide decentralized blockchain patient records. The Deputy Vice Chancellor in charge of Strategic Planning and Administration Dr. Musafiri Malimba Papias welcomed the participants and thanked the Blockchain to partner with UR and to conduct this seminar in Rwanda.

Mr Kojiro Hirate from Japan explaining What is Blockchain and how it works

As the users of technology, this training is very timely because Blockchain EXE technology is at center stage in terms of industries, business, banking, supply chain management, insurance and public services.” Musafiri saidRwanda is positioning itself as a hub for facilitating access to policy, technical and business expertise as part of a wider Smart Africa initiative with 17 other countries and one of the enabler to this initiative is adopting blockchain technology. The government and private sector see the blockchain as a fundamental shift in sharing data across industries, transparency and auditable value exchange.

Participants to the training pose for a group photo