Using Blockchain to Oust Ghost Workers | A Podcast for Music and Sports Lovers

From Ethiopia to Tanzania and South Africa to Ghana, African nations are embracing this ledger technology to weed out graft.

On his first day in office as president of Tanzania in 2015, John Pombe Magufuli made a surprise visit to the Finance Ministry and berated officials who weren’t at work. It was the first in a series of steps Magufuli has taken that have won him popular support as an anti-corruption crusader even as his government clamps down on the media and critics. This November, his administration revealed that an unlikely partner had helped in cracking down on corruption.

By using blockchain technology, Tanzania’s government announced it had weeded out thousands of “ghost workers” from the public sector, ending the monthly outflow of 430 billion Tanzanian shillings ($195.4 million) in salaries to employees who existed only on paper. The country is far from alone. From South Africa to Nigeria, Ethiopia to Ghana, many of Africa’s largest economies that have long grappled with endemic corruption are turning to technology to curb financial crimes, target services to those in need and help crucial economic sectors.

Producers of rum and cocoa alike are beginning to emphasize natural, local produce and helping revive fading food cultures.

Across Haiti, people still talk about former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s 2010 apology for American trade policies that contributed to the decimation of their country’s agriculture. By pressuring Haiti to lower tariffs in the 1990s, the U.S. flooded the country with its food products, including low-quality rice, that the local agriculture industry couldn’t compete with. But Guito Gilot isn’t looking at the past anymore.

The 50-year-old is head of business at Cap-Haïtien Cocoa Producers, aka Feccano, the country’s first cocoa cooperative focused on fair trade exports. He believes they have a fix that can help the country reclaim its agricultural self-sufficiency, thanks to a movement that began in Italy. The slow food movement originated in Rome in 1986 with a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s near the famed Spanish Steps. Until this year, Feccano has been an outlier in Haiti as part of the slow food movement, which it joined in 2006. But now, a growing number of Haitian agriculture sector groups are embracing the grassroots movement with organizational headquarters in Bra in northwest Italy, which identifies food cultures that are on the verge of disappearing, and then works with local communities to revive them.

When you think about it, athletes and musicians have a lot in common — which is the basis of this new podcast.

The pre-performance rituals. The anticipatory butterflies in the stomach. The steady roar of the crowd.

For musicians and athletes, there are a surprising number of parallels between a concert and a game. And when sports journalist and music lover Lindsay Czarniak realized that, she knew she had to find a way to dig deeper into what makes these larger-than-life figures tick.

That’s the basis of her new podcast with Cadence13, Players With Lindsay Czarniak, which debuted in early November. In each episode, Czarniak sits down with a country music star — guests so far have included Cole Swindell, Chris Young, Lee Brice, Scotty McCreery and Darius Rucker — to discuss the significance of sports in their lives, as well as what motivates them to be a top music “player.”