IOTA Crypto Network To Power Trademark East Africa's Paperless System

IOTA Foundation, the firm developing blockchain-inspired cryptocurrency network IOTA MIOTA/USD, partnered with Trademark East Africa to power its paperless trade system.

What Happened: According to an announcement shared with Benzinga on Tuesday, Trademark East Africa hopes that the IOTA network will allow it to improve supply chain transparency and ensure trust among trading partners.

The two parties plan to jointly build decentralized digital infrastructure for optimized trade exports decreasing the paperwork that clogs up the supply chain.

Trademark East Africa estimates that African entrepreneurs have to fill out an average of 96 paper documents for a single transaction, while the system that it is developing with IOTA would only need anchor documents on the network and share them with customs in destination countries to speed up the export process and decrease the paperwork.

How It Works: Initially, the system will be focused on the Kenyan flower industry that exports roughly 180,000 tonnes of flowers per year.

This kind of products need high supply chain speed to ensure that the products delivered are fresh.

The two parties studied the export process of Kenyan flower farmers and established new procedures, improved user journeys, and engaged with border agencies.

"By moving export documentation to the IOTA Tangle, traders could drastically reduce their time and monetary costs as well as virtually eliminate the risks of lost or inaccurate paperwork," the announcement reads.

Read also: How to buy IOTA

The next stage of the project will be expanding the system to allow more industries to use it and such as tea export to the United Kingdom, fish to Belgium, and textiles to the United States, and collaborate with African governments to test the integration with their border agencies.