John Ellingson

In Somalias Southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions between 2011 and mid-2012, the world airdropped millions of tons of food that arrived too late even as existing supplies of food in the adjacent regions could have met the need. The donated supplies permanently disrupted Somalias for-profit food logistics industry and impaired the transitional governments ability to manage the population, eventually devolving into the lawless state that we know today. With mobile penetration rates of 54% in the affected area, what would have happened if we had instead dropped $100 into each Dahabshiil account to buy food or whatever they needed? What I am proposing is a research project that creates economic baselines, or segment indices, for a small, relatively isolated market and then uses a Blockchain Lab to study the impact of traditional monetary tools versus Helicopter Drops and segment targeted MicroCopter Drops on the local economy recovery over time. Using the Blockchain Lab, a scaled-down cloud-based decentralized ledger system, would allow my project to track funds deployed and subsequent transactions using those funds. In a Developing World field trial, I would propose to key decision-makers, like Cubas BCC, that we test this digital system to see if it improves their speed, flexibility and desired impact of money flow at a significantly lower cost than traditional systems, and to measure how their local economies return to normalcy after the impact of natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, regional recessions, large infrastructure investments and FOREX fluctuations.