Kevin Imani first stepped toes into the world of blockchain in 2015 and left for other things before retiring a couple of years later. Eight years down the line, he has grown to become one of the pioneers of the blockchain industry in Kenya and East Africa.

In a conversation with Technext, Kevin Imani sheds light on the technicalities surrounding blockchain regulation and taxation in Kenya and the work Sankore 2.0 is doing.

Blockchain in Kenya 

A friend introduced kevin Imani to the concept of Bitcoin and its whitepaper in 2015, but he had his hands on so many other things then, so he didn’t concentrate.

However, around 2018, the same friend that introduced Kevin to blockchain reached out to him and said some blockchain protocols were trying to get into Africa, and they didn’t know how to.

“I said let me look into this, and from there we started Sankore 2.0.”

Kevin Imani remarks that the huge transaction volumes drew him to explore blockchain in Kenya. 

“I wanted to know the reason why Kenya for consecutive years had high crypto p2p volumes. I was curious. Also, there was no reliable data in the ecosystem.”

Additionally, Kevin Imani discovered that Kenya was a consumer market; many enthusiasts were holding and trading crypto, but there were not so many builders on blockchain technology.

According to Kevin, he and his team organised the first pitch competition in the Kenyan web3 space. “We had a large number of people that applied, but we still realised that the visibility that builders had was still lacking.”

Summarily, the space is early. Eastern African blockchain builders are doing well, and they are excited by the fact there is a huge population that is ready to adopt crypto, according to Kevin Imani.