The rainy season in Accra, with a dozen girls crammed in a stuffy classroom, staring at the code dancing on the screen. When the first smart contract was successfully deployed on @lineaeth, cheers awakened the lizards outside the window—this was the first time they had touched the pulse of blockchain in their lives.
Three years ago, I discovered a harsh reality at a hackathon in Amsterdam: there was not a single African female face in the entire venue. Those geniuses blocked by visas and poverty should have been shining in the Ethereum universe.
"If the mountain does not come to us, we will make our own way."
ETHAccra was born this way. Without initial funding, we designed the course using Linea's low gas fee advantage; without equipment, we connected to the testnet using mobile phones. What touched me the most was 16-year-old Amina—she walks ten kilometers every day to study, and has built Ghana's first agricultural product traceability DApp using Linea. Now her family farm sells cocoa beans to Switzerland through smart contracts.
In the past three years, we have quietly changed these:
Let the number of West African female developers grow from single digits to 700+
Deployed over 120 real projects on Linea
Helped farmers reduce cross-border settlement costs by 87% using ZK technology
Last night I received new news from Amina: she just used Linea's cross-chain functionality to help the neighboring village solve the funding flow problem for medical supplies procurement. She said: "We are only one Layer2 distance away from Silicon Valley."
@lineaeth The most touching part is not the zkEVM technology, but that it allows dreams from every corner to be equally put on the blockchain. When the sunset in Ghana reflects on the screen of a programming girl, I see the most beautiful form of blockchain—it is not cold code, but a tool that can change fate.
At the developer conference in Buenos Aires, I bring more African stories to you. Shall we witness how technology makes the world flatter together?
