It’s Spring, see what’s sprung up during March!
Project Update from Financial Service Grantee the Mifo’s Initiative
The Mifos Initiative was accepted as a Financial Services Grantee in Jan 2024 to research how ILP can be part of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and contribute to democratizing financial services through its open protocol suite for sending payments across different ledgers.
David Higgins writes..
So where are we at?
Jan and Feb have been focussed on the first of these phases. Firstly, we had to ensure we have a deeper understanding of ILP before talking to interviewees. The support we have had from the ILP community has been great in this. We soon discovered that the view of ILP we had from documentation such as the website was giving us only a partial understanding. This was especially true around how ILP and Rafiki work together. Adrian Hope-Bailie was very generous in his time, taking James Dailey, our research/interview lead from BaaSFlow through how these work and some of his experiences and the lessons that have been learnt in the ILP journey so far. From this we were able to understand much better the role ILP could play when we explored ideas with our Interviewees, most of whom had limited exposure to ILP.
To learn more about this grantee you can read the update, ask questions or leave a comment.
Future Money Grant Cohort
This month we have final reports from grantees Subhashish Panigrahi & Esther Mwema
Subhashish Panigrahi shares the final report and discusses his docufilm.
The short docufiction Bringing Down a Mountain (dir. Subhashish Panigrahi), made possible through the Future|Money Grant, dissects the intersecting themes of access, abolition and caste through the experiences of residents of a rural village and that of a hyper-urban city. Set in a rural village in India, this 13-minute film underscores community sovereignty in access to mobile data and the know-how and decision-making power of digital payments. Premiered at the Interledger Summit 2023 in Costa Rica, a DVD copy of Bringing Down a Mountain is archived physically at the U.S. Library of Congress, and the film is gearing up to be screened at major international film festivals. The screenplay by noted activist and poet Bharat Majhi includes long-form Odia poetry narrated by educator Monalisa Moharana and theatre maestro Debadatta Pati. Blackmagic Design published an official press release announcing the film with an exclusive interview with the director, and the Interledger Foundation published a podcast with behind-the-scenes updates.
To learn more about this docufilm, you can listen to Subhashish share his thoughts in this short summary here.
Esther Mwema shares some good news final report on her project
Sikhula Sonke: Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking is an audio-visual art project to document the practice of rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) in Southern Africa, specifically in Zambia and South Africa.
Project Update
Following our progress report, Sikhula Sonke is now available online through our website made for community members to connect with the village banks in Southern Africa.The creation of this living archive has shown us that village banks are:
- inclusive systems in southern Africa that promote economic and cultural resilience by collectively encouraging and self-regulating savings and wealth generation.
- defining wealth beyond exclusively financial terms. Wealth is relational and rooted in community rather than exclusively individual.
- advanced, inclusive, and feminist systems that are supporting communities to care for themselves.
- "Afrofuturist" in nature because they serve as a sight of colonial resistance because they promote autonomy and dignity of those excluded by financial institutions.
- democratic in nature, allow for self-governance and the creation of their own constitution.
Thanks to our Future Money Grantees Subhashish and Esther for creating these exciting projects.
We were also in conversation with Subhashish and Esther about their respective projects.
In episode four Subhashish Panigrahi chats with us about his new short film “Bringing Down A Mountain", a docufiction set in the Odia Language, he uses open-source imagery to reimagine how technology is built, implemented, and affects financial inclusion. His films focus on conservation and assertion and broader issues of access, digital rights, and openness. He advocates for community-led media, open tech development, and indigenous sovereignty.
In our latest episode aired on March 19 Esther Mwema deep dives into her project Sikhula Sonke: Living Archives of Afrofuturist Village Banking, which she created with three communities in Zambia and South Africa. Sikhula Sonke is an Xhosa phrase that means 'we grow together.' The project is a mixed-media artwork and storytelling project that documents informal savings groups to understand inclusive financial models in Southern Africa.
You can find these F|M podcast episodes streaming on @Castopod or listen to these exciting conversations by visiting https://podcast.interledger.org/@futuremoneypodcast/episodes
Internet Governance Policy Monitoring Report - March 2024
Interledger Research Fellow Ayden Ferdeline shares a quick update about the upcoming conference NetMundial+10
Hello, all!
We are now six weeks away from NetMundial+10, and with the preparatory work now well-underway for the World Summit on the Information Society, the Summit of the Future, and the Internet Governance Forum, some global topics are reaching the finishing line. That will be the focus of today's report.
At the European level, as political parties gear up for European Parliamentary elections in June, the legislative work there is stuck if the file wasn’t wrapped up in February. More on this later in the year!Ayden
If you're interested in NetMundial+10, please leave your question or comment under Ayden's blog post.
Digital Money Blog Series
In the third installment of the bi-monthly Digital Money Blog Series: The Mobile Money Ecosystem, Latin America and the Caribbean Julaire Hall, ILF Program Officer, writes about how Latin America and the Caribbean have witnessed a steady increase in the availability and adoption of mobile money services since 2019.
The existing payment landscape has continued to evolve over the past few years with significant investment in infrastructural development, regulatory reforms, and the influence of digital transformation on fintech innovations in several countries including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Columbia, just to name a few.
You can read the full post at the link above and share your thoughts on this interesting topic.
Rafiki Updates
Big news from the ILF Tech Team’s Sabine Schaller
Big news! We have released 2! new versions of Rafiki - Alpha 6 and 7. Alpha 6 was the feature heavy release and we’ll focus on this one here. Alpha 7 was a follow-up release to fix a migration bug that Alpha 6 introduced. For more details, read the Alpha 6 and Alpha 7 release notes.
Sabine also shares other nuggets of information about our new telemetry feature, payment liquidity, the frustration with Postman and its hybrid synchronization with its own servers and Github and more.
Interledger Community Call Recap
Here is a recap of our 13 March 2024 Interledger Community Call with Meeting Notes and links to recordings.
Notes, Recording and Podcast
- Watch Meeting recording on Youtube.
- Listen to the Podcast for free on SoundCloud here.
- Public note taking document here
For those new to our community, ILF stands for Interledger Foundation. We are a community of technologists, digital creatives, researchers, entrepreneurs, and educators working to build new pathways to financial inclusion and equity through digital transactions.
Stay up to date with us here and on the Interledger Slack Channel
Until next time!
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