Blockchain can act as a ‘fixer’ for many infrastructure issues plaguing governments, as well as broader societal goals such as women’s rights, says Dana Al Salem.
Al Salem is the Founder/Co-founder of Clockwork Agency (Sweden), Yahoo! Europe (U.K.), LostRecords (France), FanFactory Ltd (U.K.), and L’Amandier (Morocco). She is also an advisor to SPiCE VC, a leading venture capital fund that invests in the blockchain sector, an international innovation expert and a serial entrepreneur.
Al Salem said that she is particularly partial to blockchain technology because of its flexible nature and because it can act as a technical backbone across multiple sectors. ‘That’s why I like blockchain because it is (industry) agnostic. You can apply it to agriculture, to shipping, to so many (different) sectors.’
Promoting women’s rights via blockchain technology
While blockchain is an enabler and a backbone for multiple tech solutions across both public and private sectors, it is also a huge enabler for women’s inclusion in society, Al Salem said.
‘42% of women are unbanked, and when you talk about land ownership less than 20% of the land around the world is owned by women. You have certain regions of the world that are better and other regions where the statistics are lacking around women’s IDs.’
‘And that’s also where blockchain can help because if you don’t have an ID, it means that you can’t have a bank account, means that you can’t have financial independence, it means you can own land, etc.’
Al Salem said these benefits extend beyond just land and ownership, with the blockchain also a perfect fit for contracts such as marriages.
‘Imagine everyone put their wedding contracts on the blockchain. You wouldn’t have these inheritance disputes and you wouldn’t have women having their land taken away from them because (they live) in a patriarchal society. You would have everything transparent on the blockchain. And it would be defendable.’
Financial inclusion via blockchain technology
Al Salem noted that these benefits would all contribute towards greater financial inclusion for women across society.
‘You can open a crypto wallet with some kind of digital ID. You don’t need any banking fees or maintenance fees. And let’s not forget that a majority of women around the world are in part-time jobs or what’s considered informal employment. They can’t even get access to bank accounts in a traditional banking environment.’
‘So this is what we’re talking about, how blockchain can help women in different ways in different sectors.’
Why BSV is a great fit for digital identity
While women can direct beneficiaries of a financial system built on the BSV blockchain, Al Salem noted that all citizens would benefit from the system in different ways.
She encouraged governments looking to adopt blockchain technologies to focus on these factors and note that everything is recorded and on a ledger – making it immutable.
She noted that speed and the ability to process massive amounts of data quickly are also vitally important. These need to be tied together with a strong system so that governments and citizens know that their data is safe, she said.
