It has been more than 3 weeks since Blockchain Uniport launched on social media. Last week, I spent time talking with the founders, Emmanuel Ademakin and Munachim Raymond, about their visions and plans for the community.
Both are final-year students of the department of Electrical/Electronics Engineering at the University of Port Harcourt, and like many young people today, they are blockchain enthusiasts.
For them, starting a community on campus had always been at the back of their minds, but it wasn’t until the Binance Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Awareness Tour in June earlier this year, which they attended together, that they knew the time was ripe.
”We saw how much students from other schools benefited from belonging to a community. Student ambassadorship programs, all-expense-paid trips, scholarships, etc.
We knew we could even do more, so we agreed that once we got back to Port Harcourt, we were going to start a Uniport community”, Munachim said to me.
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They had searched around to know if a community like this already existed on campus and when they found none, they went about registering the needed usernames and commenced discussions with key stakeholders in the Blockchain community and the school authority.
It is no surprise that in less than three weeks, they have announced partnerships with the University of Port Harcourt‘s, Institute of Engineering Technology and Innovation Management (METI), Flitaa, AAX, and Cryptosmart‘s Borderless.
Despite the ASUU strike, since its launch, Blockchain Uniport has garnered so much popularity amongst Uniport students that while this interview was being conducted, we were interrupted by a stranger who quickly introduced himself as a web developer after seeing the Blockchain Uniport logo on the shirts of founders Emmanuel and Munachim.
He talked about how he wanted to port to Blockchain development and quickly shared his contact with Emmanuel.
According to the founders, the vision for Blockchain Uniport is to be more than just a crypto and blockchain community.
“The aim is to provide free and affordable tech skills to community members, making them employable students.”
“We will be commencing trainings soon, and not it is not going to be about blockchain alone but Tech in general. We also have plans to organise a huge tech event before the year runs out.”
With the community growing exponentially, they tell me that their long-term goal for Blockchain Uniport is continuity.
As final-year students with a few months left in school, they understand the importance of building to last, and that is why they aren’t running Blockchain Uniport alone, having already announced a crew of volunteers as part of the team structure.
Blockchain Uniport is in its early days, but the signs are certainly promising. There is no limit to what they can achieve at this rate.