This past month has seen a particularly exciting development for Stratis, as we announced a long-term partnership with the charitable Foundation of King Oyo, the reigning monarch of the Tooro Kingdom in the South West of Uganda.
A kingdom with a population of approximately one million, the Tooro Kingdom has enjoyed a renewed national commitment to technology under the leadership of King Oyo (Rukirabasaija Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV). The world’s youngest monarch – crowned at just 3 and a half years old – the king is known for his keen interest in technology and innovation, having recently partnered with the Uganda Industrial Research Institute to create the King Oyo Science, Technology, Innovation and Industrialization park.
Under this partnership, Stratis will fund a new blockchain innovation centre in the kingdom designed to encourage the development of blockchain-based knowledge and development skills. Stratis is committed to encouraging creativity and innovation at the centre and the syllabus has been designed with this in mind, using case studies to spark fresh ideas around blockchain applicability.
As Stratis is a Microsoft-focused blockchain platform built from the ground up utilizing Microsoft programming languages (C#), the syllabus will leverage renowned development tools, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio. As part of the partnership, Stratis plans to locate a senior team of business and technical roles at the new innovation centre with the vision to further grow its ecosystem across Africa. As this blockchain innovation centre launches in the Tooro Kingdom, Stratis Africa launches alongside it.
In addition, the parnters will collaborate on new blockchain use cases that will benefit the kingdom and its population. For example, the Tooro Kingdom is renowned for its agricultural properties – rich soils, sunshine, high rainfall. Stratis’s management team is therefore discussing how blockchain technologies can be used to support the management of resources. By setting up IoT devices to interact with Stratis Blockchain technologies, an immutable data store can be created that contains data about plot usage, weather conditions, product traceability, and finances.
“Blockchain technologies offer new approaches to organizing societies and increasing efficiencies,” says King Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV. “In the Tooro Kingdom, we see that the immutability of blockchain has significant potential, for example, for use cases within agriculture, logistics, banking and many more. I’m excited to be working with Stratis to further knowledge and understanding across the kingdom.”
Our founder and CEO, Chris Trew, seconded this excitement: “We’re looking forward to developing a syllabus that will be taught at the new innovation center, focused on the use of Stratis blockchain technologies. We view this investment as the beginning of Stratis Africa and plan to deploy a senior team to Uganda. King Oyo is taking a forward-thinking stance on innovation that will bring new economic opportunities to the Tooro Kingdom.”
Stratis has seen significant growth in new applications built using its foundational Layer 1 blockchain technologies over recent years as developers embrace the simplicity of developing in the world’s most widely known programming language, C#. We look forward to seeing this growth continue with this partnership with the Tooro Kingdom and subsequent launch of Stratis Africa.
