31: Uniting Africans Across the Globe with a Digital Nation // Eche Enziga

Today on our CityDAO Podcast episode, we had another enriching discussion about network state with our amazing guest, Eche Enziga from Afropolitan. In this episode, we will learn more about the story of Afropolitan, their vision and goals, and other interesting issues about the network state. Afropolitan aims to create a Digital Nation that will enable all Africans to build abundant lives. It is a network comprising the best that Africa and the diaspora offer across art, finance, tech, health, sports, and media. The Afropolitan Network is a Curator of Black and African – Talent (recruit, partner up), Culture (art, media, fashion), Capital (investment DAOs), Information (newsletter, blog, Twitter), and Experiences (events, curated offerings). Afropolitan’s objective is to solve the Crisis of Legitimacy experienced by Africans worldwide by building a new source of Legitimacy embodied in their Digital Nation and they plan to do this in four phases. Currently, they are at Phase One and they are looking to onboard the most dedicated and ambitious people to join their fledgling Network.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 3:14 At a younger age, Eche and his family frequently moved to different places and countries. This experience made him realize that home is not exactly a physical location.
• 4:05 Eche talks about his love for traveling and the realization that borders no longer represent reality.
• 6:44 While he was still in law school, Eche started phase one of Afropolitan, which focuses on doing events.
• 7:39 In 2020, the Afropolitan phase one was hit hard by the COVID pandemic. Eche had to transition and adapt to the situation, which led to Afropolitan phase two.
• 8:56 Eche shares his story of how he got interested in network state.
• 13:16 To create a network state, Eche talks about several stages or phases within Afropolitan.
• 15:12 For the final phase of Afropolitan, they are aiming for full sovereignty of their network state.
• 17:51 Eche believes that there can be a network state event in the future where every group can meet up and have a series of informative discussions.
• 19:12 Currently, Afropolitan is in phase one where they are planning to drop their NFT within the release of the Black Panther movie.
• 22:42 According to Eche, you have to contribute in order to become an Afropolitan citizen.
• 24:21 The Afropolitan network state has a 10-year window to achieve all its goals and become a sovereign state.
• 28:59 Eche discusses the advantages of digital technology and utilizing these technologies to make everyone’s life better in the coming future.
• 35:35 Eche provides an analogy between a house with a weak foundation and the current political framework that we are using.
• 36:22 More continued discussions on the issues of politics and how technology can help improve the system.
• 41:36 As someone who goes to DC, Eche knows that many politicians look down on technology and all the tech people.
• 45:02 Afropolitan will be in several conferences in the coming months and Eche is inviting everyone to check them out.

Key Points from the Interview:

1. “If you want to simplify it to people who don’t know what a network state is, it’s like we’re building Wakanda on chain basically. It’s like utilizing this concept of what it looks like when you saw Africans in their most advanced phase, and we’re bringing that to the forefront.”
2. “Can we build a network state that allows us to restore our dignity at scale? And that’s what we’re really trying to achieve here with what we’re doing.”

Resources Mentioned: