General News of Thursday, 10 October 2019

Source: ghananewsagency.org

Ghana to host third Blockchain conference

File photo File photo

Ghana is gearing up to host the third Ghana Blockchain Conference in Accra on November 28, 2019.

The event, which is being organised by Blockchain Network and comes on the heels of the highly successful First and Second Ghana Blockchain conferences, will take place at the Golden Tulip Hotel, on the theme: “Blockchain for Digital Transformation."

A statement on the event, made available to the Ghana News Agency said there would be a Pre-Conference Event on the ninth edition of the Blockchain Training workshop slated for November ?26 and 27, 2019?.

It will engage Blockchain community inspired by a wide array of potential applications from Finance and Banking, Academia, Shipping and logistics, Medical, Documentation and Certificates.

The Conference will feature Plenary Sessions, Keynote presentations, panel discussion, exhibition, focusing on Blockchain technology and its applications.

The release said speakers and practitioners would share best practices and participants would also have the first-hand demonstration on some tools and solutions in the one day conference.

The conference is aimed at creating awareness and forum to network with peers, create good policy environment for Blockchain technology to flourish, knowing the policy issues, meeting stakeholders and hearing from the experts.

It said the seminar was being held in Ghana to keep the country abreast with developments in Blockchain technologies, policies, management and solutions pertinent to the ongoing digital transformation.

It will also provide the country with opportunities to leverage new technologies like Blockchain, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and apply them for development.

The annual conference provides a platform for collaboration between stakeholders, government agencies, financial institutions and Blockchain community as a whole to share ideas on best practices.

The release said for the past several years, Blockchain and cryptocurrency had gradually gained worldwide recognition and that it was time for those who were familiar and working with the technology to come and share their work on Blockchain Technology.

It said the advent of Blockchain had undoubtedly changed the paradigm of business transactions worldwide and Ghana was no exception with a number of Ghanaians signing on to different Blockchain platforms.

With the increasing pace of digitization, the technology would "play an important role in transforming our society," the statement said.

Blockchain, which is a digital distributed ledger technology for recording an ordered set of transactions securely for cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Etherum has generated a lot of interest in the business sphere.

The technology provides a cryptographic identity for users, peer to peer transactions among users and a payment record of transactions.

It also provides means for storage of ordered permanent records, making it possible to create a digital ledger of transactions shared among a distributed network of computers.

It uses cryptography to allow each participant on the network to access the ledger in a secure way without the need for a central authority.

Blockchain Network is a Non-Profit Organization established as a forum for Blockchain community engagements, networking and sharing of best practices.