People in Emerging Tech gives you real stories of people doing amazing things with emerging technologies. From artificial intelligence (AI) to the Internet of things (IoT) and even blockchain, we spotlight Africans building and using these technologies in exciting ways.
Despite the lack of documentation, African history is replete with stories of people with inspiring achievements like Warrior Queen Amina. Although historians have conflicting theories about her life, the consensus is that she personified bravery and valiance in war.
Amina was born in 1533 to the ruler of Zazzau (now Zaria), and, unlike most women in her time, she had an unusual interest in warfare.
When Amina’s brother, Karama, ascended the throne, she fought in all the major military campaigns he organised and displayed unparalleled military competence. After her brother’s death, she was the undisputed choice to take his place as the Zazzau’s ruler.
She ruled for 34 years, most of which were spent leading wars and expanding her territory, dominating most of what is known as Hausaland. Queen Amina. Source: BBC Unlike Western legends and histories that have been turned into movies, Queen Amina’s story could be found predominantly in history books until its recent adaptation into a Netflix movie.
Interestingly, a team of Nigerians is creating a new home for the story on the blockchain. Queen Amina on the blockchain
Animated version of Queen Amina story by Afrobubble. “ We started thinking about transformative characters we can immortalise on the blockchain. We have stories, Africans have good stories, but we’ve just not heard about them.
“Like there are no movies about them as often as, say, Alexander the Great. We know about Napoleon and all but barely know about certain histories in Africa.”
Venn Oputa, Co-founder of the non-fungible token (NFT) collection, Afrobubble , decided to create one of Africa’s first NFT collections to put a piece of Africa on the blockchain. With the advent of Web3 as the new Internet age powered by blockchain, the Afrobubbule team hopes to carve out room for African history.
The decision to use one of Africa’s most revered female warriors was a no-brainer for the Afrobubble team. On a call with Techpoint Africa , Oputa said,
“We asked ourselves, ‘Who can we immortalise?’, and it was Queen Amina. If you check her history, she is like Alexander the Great; she was this mighty queen who was conquering lands. She was even like the fundamental idea of feminism, a strong [and] empowered queen.”
The African warrior inspired the Afrobubble collection, which recreated the story, bringing the 16th Century warrior to the 21st Century, where she’s the only one able to defeat a great, yet-to-exist evil.
For lovers of cartoons and comics, the story bears some resemblance to Samurai Jack, an animated American TV series about a Japanese samurai who gets sent to the future to destroy a villain from his past.
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“So we went with Queen Amina but decided to do a couple of things, like adding our twist to the story and giving it a futuristic approach.
“Like Samurai Jack, this is a queen who was very powerful in the past. Now she’s moved into the future where people know about her, but she doesn’t know about them.”
The NFT collection that houses the futuristic version of Queen Amina’s story has 3,000 NFTs or bubs — Africa-themed characters with different levels of rarity that influence the price of each NFT on the Solana blockchain. How an NFT collection preserves history
Afrobubble website While Queen Amina’s story is inspiring, how the NFT collection preserves its history might be a bit fuzzy. Oputa, also known as Merlin on the Afrobbuble team, sees this as a call to curious people to go and learn more.
“We want people to know this character when they’re going through history, even on the blockchain. We want them to be like, ‘Oh, who was Queen Amina?’ We have a rendition of Queen Amina. But they will be like, ‘Oh, let’s go and search for her’, and that will lead to so much more.” Beyond NFTs and history According to Micheal Ugwu, Nigerian angel investor and NFT expert, branding is one of the many reasons people buy NFTs .NFT collections are themed and have messages to pass, but that is not all there is to the creation of such collections. And Afrobubble wants to preserve her story for posterity.Oputa explained that the collection is a marketing strategy to get more brands and individuals into the NFT space, creating an infrastructure that shows the benefits of creating value with NFTs.“Afrobubble’s initial Genesis […]
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