We are participating in the Based Africa Buildathon with a strong commitment to growing the Base community in Zambia. Our people have faced many struggles, but we believe that Base and blockchain offer real solutions to these challenges. Unfortunately, many are unaware of the potential these technologies hold. Our mission is to bridge that gap, showing our community how Base can revolutionize the way we live and solve our problems.

Our strategy is to introduce Base in fun, hands-on and engaging ways, helping people connect with its benefits on a practical level. Base can be a powerful tool for development, providing opportunities for economic empowerment, financial inclusion, and resource management. We believe this technology can help us live with dignity, create opportunities, and drive development, and we are determined to ensure our people are not left behind. Through this Buildathon, we aim to showcase the real, life-changing potential of Base and blockchain in Zambia. By incorporating hands-on activities like heritage NFTs, we turn tours into cool, immersive learning experiences that highlight both Zambia’s rich history and Base's future impact. This new approach makes tours an essential part of building based communities, tourism and learning landscape.

Our project is highly scalable due to its flexible, replicable model and its focus on community engagement. The Base Tour can easily be adapted to different cities and regions. Once participants are onboarded and familiar with Base, they can engage with the ecosystem from anywhere. We can scale this project across Zambia and even into neighboring countries, creating a growing web of Base education and cultural/heritage preservation. This community-driven approach fosters organic growth and long-term sustainability, allowing the project to grow beyond our direct involvement.

We have developed this model to incorporate fun activities into our Blockchain education and onboarding, ensuring adoption and growth

1. Lack of Awareness and Knowledge: The main issue is sparking interest and maintaining user engagement with blockchain technology. Many Zambians are unaware of the existence of this tech and how it can improve their lives, and transform the continent from financial inclusion to decentralized solutions. We're focusing on making Base approachable and accessible, using simplified education and hands-on experiences to show its real-world benefits, especially to new users.

2. Continuity is a major challenge we are addressing head-on. It’s not just about getting people to sign up or learn about Base once, but ensuring they stay engaged and continue to use the technology for the long term. I’ve seen how initial interest can fade if there isn’t a strong support system or regular touchpoints to keep users connected, motivated and using platforms on Base.

3. Infrastructure Gaps for physical and Digital Preservation: In Zambia, there’s limited infrastructure for preserving our history and heritage. This means future generations may lose access to vital historical knowledge.

4. Lack of Tours: Zambia lacks a structured culture of tours, tour guides, and historical engagement. By leveraging Base, we can create immersive and interactive experiences that engage locals and visitors alike, connecting them with Zambia’s rich history and encouraging tourism growth.

Raising Awareness and Knowledge: Through engaging and interactive tours, we solve the challenge of raising awareness about Base, blockchain & Yellow Card. The project is already proving its potential, as the Base Tour was fully booked within three days after we boosted the project on Instagram. This rapid response highlights the magnetic appeal of our approach, showing that people are eager to participate when introduced to the concept in cool, fun engaging and accessible ways. The project is impactful as it generated immediate interest, creating momentum that will draw more people into the Base ecosystem.

Ensuring Continuity: Continuity is addressed through the ongoing nature of our tours. By creating new experiences and changing locations, we maintain engagement and keep growing the Base ommunity. Every tour will not only onboard new users but provide follow-up resources to ensure that participants continue using and benefiting from Base. This creates a loop of sustained learning, where users remain connected to the ecosystem long-term, ensuring continuity and participation.

Preserving Heritage: To solve this, we introduced heritage NFTs minted on Base via Moshicam. Our goal is to digitize our history, heritage and culture on-chain, ensuring its preservation for future generations. This aspect of our project shows how Base will serve as a solution for the lack of digital storage infrastructure. In the future, we plan to professionally film the tours and mint them as NFTs, preserving the knowledge and experiences shared during the tours as part of Zambia’s historic record.

Our project tackles the lack of organized tours in Zambia by creating a fun, engaging model that blends education, heritage, and technology. Mulenga Kapwepwe has stressed the need to train Based Tour guides who will find employment through the tours. This program will ensure guides are well versed in our heritage, history and Base.

Firstly, securing resources for the tour was a significant hurdle. We needed to hire a bus to transport participants, and we had to take the cost upon ourselves, but we believed in the potential impact of the project and decided to self-fund the bus hire to ensure the tour would happen as planned. It would be ideal to have a Based tour bus to avoid the cost of hiring one.

Another issue we encountered was with sound equipment. During the tour, we experienced some feedback from the microphone, which affected the quality of our presentations and interactions. While we were able to manage, this highlighted the need to be better equipped in the future.

Thirdly, despite having a fully booked tour, only 22 participants out of 44 who registered confirmed attendance with the other 22 not responding to emails requesting confirmation. This is a lesson as we had 24 people on the waitlist who were eager to participate but we did not want a situation where participants had no where to sit. Next time, we will make sure to communicate directly through phone calls as some people don't check their emails regularly.