Blockchain will solve problems of identification, financial integration and international trade

According to Michelle Chivunga, the regional adviser to the British Blockchain Association, international trade, identification and financial isolation are the main areas that can be improved with the help of blockchain technology.

"I'm quite keen to help people in understanding what the potential of blockchain is," says Chivunga. "And at the same time I'm also quite passionate and I've done quite a bit of work and involvement with women's economic empowerment programs, working with different groups from UN women to the World Bank and a whole range of other organizations."

"I'm also focused on emerging markets and nations as there are a lot of opportunities for technology to help," she added.

Chivunga stressed that the technology of blockchain can contribute to an unprecedented improvement in the situation in the field of financial isolation.

In a world where international trade is severely criticized, Chivunga sees in the blockchain the protection from the possible devastating consequences of the global trade war.

"I think it's really important that we look at how we can use blockchain to help fund financial inclusion to help with access to digital assets that people have control over, rather than having central authorities controlling this," says Chivunga.

Increased transparency in the entire supply chain generates greater confidence and means that governments can more effectively protect consumers, and entrepreneurs can work with more reliable trade documents.

The Swiss non-profit organization World Economic Forum states that "with further investment and testing, the blockchain will be able to hide confidential information, protecting the interests of trade participants - for example, information on prices."

"Take Africa, for example, we want to encourage a lot more interregional trade," said Chivunga. "We can try and look at doing that by tapping on blockchain again because blockchain allows that opportunity for transparency and opportunities to have a more cost effective way of trading and doing business between different markets. So there's massive potential there."

It was proved that the inclusion of blockchain in trading processes reduces the time spent on completing trade finance transactions. What is now required from a week to ten days, using the technology will take only a couple of hours. At the same time, the efficiency of work is greatly increased, which will help transform not only developing but also global markets.

"A further area I see is, of course, identity," Chivunga added, "which is absolutely huge and very very important because we have a lot of problems, for example, in refugee settlement and identification, with human trafficking, modern slavery. A lot of challenges boil down to a lack of identity and people almost taking advantage of that, which leads to things like human trafficking."

According to the report of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation for 2017, while 14% of the population do not have identity cards, 24.9 million people are in the system of modern slavery.

"If we are able to record the births of a nation," Chivunga said, "we know how many children are born; they've got their identity that's recorded on the blockchain. They can be tracked."

Efforts to introduce blockchain in areas such as identity identification are already being undertaken by private companies and non-profit organizations. For example, in June last year Accenture and Microsoft created a platform for the identification of refugees. The prototype was presented at the UN headquarters in New York under the ID2020 program. With the support of the public and private sector, technology giants and NGOs, legal identification of people will be ensured by 2020.