Nigerian Youths Successfully Used Home Grown Tech Innovations to Fund the #EndSARS Protests

This moment will go down in history as a revolution that was birthed via technology. Outside the successful organization of the protests, technology has also played a huge role in fundraising for protests. These protests have mainly been independently funded by the goodwill of Nigerians who have either donated time, professional resources to the cause and/ or donated money to the Feminist Coalition, a group of Nigerian feminists who are fighting injustice and remitting money to people organizing the protests and people injured during these demonstrations. As at the time of writing, the coalition had disbursed more than $40,000 to support 128 protests across the country and still has a fund to accept donations. Boki, a protester in Abuja, says the fact that mainstream media was gagged through all of this just goes on to prove how important technology has been to the prominence of the protests, from the ease of donating money, to the trending hashtags for awareness. Still, on the topic of fundraising, it is very interesting to note that after years of vilification, financial technology companies like Flutterwave and Wallets Africa have come full circle in aiding the donations for the cause. In the beginning, there was a Flutterwave donation link through which donations could be received. Eventually, donations were moved to an account number powered by Wallets Africa. It had been alleged by various sources that a higher force has created restrictions, making it harder for the coalition to receive funds via its bank account, thereby causing a move to bitcoin as the most effective way to receive donations.

SOURCE: OKAYAFRICA