Tabi Bonney/ITADI — Travel Grant Report

Introduction

I am Tabi Bonney, founder of Itadi, LLC. We are a coffee and skin care company that has farms in Togo, West Africa. We import our raw ingredients to Los Angeles, CA our US home base. Itadi is a current grantee of ILP and were looking to expand our knowledge in open payments and web monetization. We also wanted to meet the wonderful Interledger community in person.

Key highlights about your participation at the Summit

The key highlight was getting a chance to meet the ILP team in person. It was such a pleasure meeting Ayesha, Briana, and Chris amongst others. The human connection was truly appreciated especially post pandemic lockdown. The team was warm, gracious, and full of energy and optimism about the future. The other highlight was being able to sit on the Community Building for Sustainability and Innovation panel. I was happy to share the space and insight with Karl Carter from Snake Nation, Erica Hargreave and Lawil Karama which was moderated elegantly by Ayesha Ware. It was the perfect topic because I would not be in this ILP community if it was not for Kokayi Walker who gave an intro via zoom which set a great tone for the panel. Having a global community is the only way forward for a better world, to push the boundaries of what we can do as a human race, and I feel ILP will do that with financial inclusion.

Highlight your key takeaways from the Summit

The key takeaway for me is that the current space of Interledger Protocol, Web Monetization, and new Open Payments tech is a big experiment where we are all trying to figure it out through research and connect the dots. Enthused to know that we are a community on the forefront of a vast landscape that will make access to payments seamless globally. I am happy to be in a community of problem solvers. The detailed tech talk of Rafiki and TigerBeetle was above my head but I am appreciative that those talks took me out of my comfort zone…how else are we going to grow?

The two presentations that really hit home for me were actually back to back. The 5 P’s of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by Erin Brown and DFS Lab Work by Jake Kendall. The 1st encouraged me to seek out this space more and know that my voice and point of view does matter. And the DFS Lab presentation spoke specifically to the challenges that I am facing as an entrepreneur having businesses in West Africa.It was great to know that I am not alone.

Indicate topic(s) if any, you thought could have been covered but were not.

Nothing that I can think of. The Summit covered many topics. I thought it was more than enough info for the 2 days.

Let us know how you might be interested in participating in ILPSummit2023.

I am completely open to participating in the next Summit! I am not sure what that looks like yet but would love to be involved in any capacity.

What have you done post-Summit to showcase your participation in the Summit?

I shared my participation via my personal Instagram page @tabibonney. I have also been sharing in personal circles with other entrepreneurs in different spaces.

Any next steps and/or leads emanating from your participation at the Summit?

I really connected with Erin Brown from USAID. I thought her presentation at the Summit was great! I definitely see alignment with what Itadi is working towards and USAID. Meeting with her in DC soon to see what we can do together. Also it was great reconnecting with Karl Carter. I plan on visiting him in South Africa in 2023 and he plans on coming to Togo as well to see how we can work with each other and assist with each other’s future plans.