Photo: Holden Warren; Liberia, 2017
As-Salaam Alaykum, peace be upon you. My name is Mohammed al Global-Citizen. I am a blunt representation a large demographic on Earth. I most likely live in a coastal urban or peri-urban setting. I have limited to no access to sanitary plumbing, clean water, electricity, effective governance, legal justice, the use of an alphabet, or preventative healthcare. Notably, computer algorithms play no direct role in my life. I earn the equivalent of $1 United States Dollar a day through physical labor. The money I earn covers basic family needs, perhaps some entertainment money, however, I do not have a bank account and access to scalable financial tools and opportunities are not even a viable wish. Recognizing the challenges of the context of my life, my struggles are measurably better than any woman in my life.
However, I do have access to mobile communications and even a community digital tablet. Due to the high cost of fossil fueled energy, up to 20% of my annual income is spent charging my personal device.
Bottom-up infrastructure development
Upon learning other communities in my surrounding area where earning digital money by producing electricity from their personal and agricultural waste my life has leap-frogged to the next level. My community leaders installed a sewage to electricity machine and built a series of community toilets throughout our neighborhood. Everyone in the surrounding area downloaded a Decentralized Application (DApp) on a personal device that manages our community’s creation and trading of community electricity.
Each time I use the community toilet my waste is measured to determine its value in producing electricity. As I leave the community water closet my personal device is credited a fraction of a crypto-coin in payment. My family managed our new crypto-value on an easy to use and picture-based DApp that helped me trade, invest and save this new value. Over time my family and I earned, traded, invested and saved enough cryptocurrency to buy solar panels for our home. As these solar panels generate energy, my digital wallet continuously registers the power being produced as currency.
Soon after my neighbors and I earned, traded, invested and saved crypto-value to the point we combined our surplus to purchase a gasification device that safely processes our garbage into electricity. The energy produced from our garbage is also registered as cryptocurrency.
With my personal waste, solar panels and garbage all earning me value and providing electricity I was able to build a rainwater capture system and run that water through a filter that measures the amount of potable water I am creating — that potable water is represented by a separate cryptocurrency on the same blockchain. Now my waste, solar panels, garbage and clean water are creating value in a scalable global economic investment market.
This short-term turn-around of sustainable power, waste management, and cleaning water has increased the human capacity in my community. The absence of fossil fuel burning generators has improved air and noise quality, allowing for better sleep, and less respiratory illness. Managing waste and wastewater has reduced killer waterborne illnesses like malaria, typhoid, and cholera.
My family’s budget has seen a dramatic turn-around. Earning money by producing energy is an upside down reversal from the days of paying between $0.34 to $0.54 a kilowatt hour, as compared to Americans that pay $0.04 to $0.08 a kilowatt hour. Not contending with chronic illness I’ve been able to attend work with less absence and more productivity. My family medical costs have spiraled downward. My daughters can finally afford proper feminine sanitation products, reducing illness and increasing school attendance up to 6 weeks a year.
The immediate benefits of creating access to value creation, sustainable energy, and clean water are obvious in my life. However, the second, third and fourth order effects are much more impactful.
Photo: Holden Warren; Liberia, 2017