With help from Derek Robertson
Afropolitan, a new group that intends to create a sovereign, blockchain-enabled network state for the African diaspora, is gearing up to make its presence felt in the real world. Last Tuesday, members rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. This fall, its backers plan to begin issuing NFT passports to successful applicants who will pay a fee in exchange for formal membership and voting rights in the group.
The group, which evolved out of a travel and events business catering to Africans in the Bay Area, offers a striking illustration of the speed with which the focus of tech founders has shifted from consumer business concepts to grand political visions.
In this case, the groups backers are betting that new digital technologies like the ability to mint their own digital currency will make a 21st century reboot of pan-Africanism both politically potent and profitable.
Afropolitans co-founder, Chika Uwazie, said she and her partner, Eche Emole, settled on the idea on a trip last December to Kenya, after they read a call by crypto evangelist Balaji Srinivasan to create network states. The idea is to build new countries that begin online, gradually take shape in the real world, and achieve sovereignty. (Though as we noted last week, this is perhaps easier said than done.) Uwazie also cited Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, and the Federalist Papers, as sources of inspiration for the project.
Uwazie, 34, was born in Virginia and holds dual U.S.-Nigerian citizenships. She said the group has captured the aspirations of a generation of affluent Africans who have grown accustomed to the speed of start-up life and digital tech, and are growing impatient with the pace of political change back home.
We were frustrated with a lot of the nation-states she said We feel like they havent lived up to their potential. There are certain presidents who are sitting there for years, who have not left.
For now, the group is set up as a decentralized autonomous organization. It holds networking events and sends out a newsletter. Uwazie has pitched it to prospective members in Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania. In June, the group announced it had raised $2.1 million from a group of early investors that included Srinivasan. Because this is Web3, it also has a manifesto.
Eventually, she said Afropolitans backers hope to knit together a sovereign network with territory both in Africa and in the form of Chinatown-esque Afro Towns around the world. Already, she said, one member has offered up 30 hectares (about 75 acres) of land in Zambia.
In other words, she insists the group will one day amount to much more than a social network for the continents business-school set. Were going to be a real country, she said. We think it's harder to disrupt the old system. We want to create something with a clean slate.
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The EUs ongoing flurry of regulations on AI, crypto, and tech in general makes the U.S. look indolent by comparison.
A report published this morning by the Information and Technology Innovation Foundation argues that the EU is purposely icing the States out of the process. Accusing European regulators of a nationalist turn, the report claims that by setting rules to exclude U.S. and other non-European experts from various standards-setting and research bodies the Union is hampering its own efforts and moving toward a protectionist cybersovereignty.
The Biden administration should initiate retaliatory measures and new trade law provisions on technical standards if the EU doesnt change its tune, according to Nigel Cory, the reports author. While an all-out regulatory war with the EU around tech policy is unlikely, the report highlights significant points of tension between the U.S. tech community and European regulators as the latter attempts to carve out its place in a world dominated by mostly Stateside tech giants. Derek Robertson
The Metaverse Standards Forum, formed in June to, as its name suggests, coordinate the development of metaverse standards, has an update on the work its members including industry giants including Meta, Microsoft, and Adobe have been up to.
As Europe officially kicks its regulatory machinery into gear on the metaverse, and American wonks and regulators are increasingly at the very least turning their gaze there, its worth paying attention to what developers are doing. In its blog post the forum, which has an open admission policy and has now grown to more than 1500 members, reported the most frequently upvoted topics for development by its members. Those include:
If youve been following our coverage, the focus on these topics will not be exactly surprising. But as one of the earliest concrete examples of what the tech industry is collectively hoping to hammer out as it builds the metaverse, its a convenient list of subjects at which regulators (on both sides of the Atlantic) will inevitably be taking a long, hard look. Derek Robertson
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Stay in touch with the whole team: Ben Schreckinger ([emailprotected]); Derek Robertson ([emailprotected]); Konstantin Kakaes ([emailprotected]); and Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected]). Follow us @DigitalFuture on Twitter.
Ben Schreckinger covers tech, finance and politics for POLITICO; he is an investor in cryptocurrency.
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