Dash has funded a comprehensive outreach program in Ghana, targeting several key groups for wide adoption.
The final month has come for the Dash Roadshow in Ghana, a nationwide outreach and meetup operation. This, as well as many of the Dash-related activity in Ghana, is headed by Dash representative Mahamadu Abdul-Salam, who sees this as the best available tool to seek liberty and financial freedom for his people:
“I am seeking financial freedom for my people, this fight made me start a think tank in 2015 to advocate for sound public policies that will give economic freedom to Ghanaians, I advocated and run entrepreneurship training to enhance youth economic growth but along the line, I realize though it is good to seek for limited government but that wasn’t coming fast enough as a solution to the problem I want to solve which is poverty and youth (graduate) unemployment. Then I found Dash Digital Cash; upon my studies of the Dash technology, I realize I could fast achieve my dream If I incorporate Dash in my works why because it gives financial freedom to people just like I wanted.”
According to Abdul-Salam, this could have been any cryptocurrency, however Dash’s cheap and fast transactions, as well as community funding mechanism, made it ideally suited for the task:
“I realized Dash is a great coin that could make me leave a legacy by taking my people to financial sovereignty and yes today, I have guys especially in universities raising capital to start business upon completion through little investments in Dash. And this is possible because of the community’s budget system that allows for Diverse promotional project funding, hence enhancing growth.”
The Dash Roadshow is set to include two meetups, two radio appearances, and one television appearance in each of Ghana’s 10 separate regions.
Entrepreneurship with Dash to improve the conditions of teachers around the country
A large focus of Dash outreach in Ghana is in the educational system and its members, students and teachers alike. According to Abdul-Salam, this has led to a great outreach opportunity for Dash, as many without full-time jobs lined up or adequate income seek to invest in order to improve their conditions:
“The area doing best in Dash right now is tertiary students, public and private sector employees. The students invest little by little on regular basis in Dash because every student want to escape unemployment after school. Employees such as teachers of late have been great patronizers of Dash. The reason is, they need multiple source of income and Dash has proving to be one of it. Those of these employees who invested in Dash earlier are making good returns due to the recent price increase and are getting lots of their colleagues involve.”
A recently passed treasury proposal funds a comprehensive approach to financial education in Ghana. This includes a multi-stage effort to reach educators around the country, train them on the benefits of Dash as a stable long-term investment, and empower them to then teach their colleagues and students. Additionally, the program includes top-to-bottom business and entrepreneurship education for students, giving them all the financial and management skills necessary to start a business, as well as training in how to leverage Dash to create a successful enterprise.
The remaining challenge: business adoption
While Dash outreach and education in Ghana has taken great strides forward, one of the lacking areas is business adoption, according to Abdul-Salam. He sees this as partly because the majority of outreach so far has focused more on investment and education:
“The most difficult part of Dash adoption in Ghana Businesses. The reason is that, I (we) have not worked so much around businesses accepting Dash, the emphasis has been on students and the general public to invest in Dash, make return when price appreciates or keep for long term to start whatever capital intensive projects/businesses. So most Dash users in Ghana for now are either investing for long term or for profits in short term.”
Abdul-Salam sees challenges such as fiat currency conversion, as well as the lack of a physical location or office where Dash representatives can be directly accessed, which can create trust issues among merchants:
“A major factor why Businesses are difficult getting involve is, most of them care so much about their funds and has no good knowledge of Dash, the few who understand it well are skeptical because Dash has no physical location anywhere in Ghana they can walk in to lay complaints, exchange huge amounts of Dash for fiat etc. The lack of guarantee of fiat availability for Dash exchange by businesses makes some businesses I have interacted with reluctant in accepting Dash, hopefully if there is a great office of Dash someday in the future, Dash can easily go mainstream in Ghana as you might have been seeing on Facebook as Ghanaians talk about Dash.”
