Hello ICP community. The reputation of this blockchain has been severely tarnished among Kenyan developers because of one yvone kangondu - x.com.
Yvonne is the founder of ICP hub kenya and surprisingly no product has come out of Kenya even though the hub has spent tens of thousands of dollars?
I have been part of ICP since 2020 and the major reason. I left is because I did not understand how people like her are able to get community grants.
@jamesbeadle is right , The community needs to pay special attention on how grants are given out. Because Yvonne knows nothing about blockchain but she is running a blockchain community teaching others about it. Its a big shame she represents Kenyan community in ICP blockchain.
I propose we defund ICP Kenya Hub immediately because it has just been siphoning community money without any real tangible results for years.
I agree they tend to be limited in terms of technical capabilities and growing a product .
Look into this do ypu guys want zero results by having numbers with zero builders??
What you are saying is not true. ICP Hub Kenya is by far one of the most active hubs globally.
Our track record proves it. ICP Hub Kenya is one year old and so far we have done the following:
Early this year, when the ICP became the blockchain with the highest developer activity, 20% of the new developers came from ICP Hub Kenya, second to the ICP Hub India
We have built the biggest blockchain developer community in Kenya and East Africa, you can check to confirm
We have nearly 200 canisters deployed from our hub activities
We have hosted 15 hackathons in East Africa
We have organized over 60 events all over East Africa and partnered with over 20 other events.
Our database from events we have hosted locally totals a reach of over 5000 people, with bulk being developers, from the events we have hosted. This is data that is available to the Hubs teams
We have local government partnerships including the National Research Fund and a partnership with the Ministry of IT in Rwanda which helped us in launching the Rwanda Spoke
We have spoken at over 40 events all over Africa
We have made over 50 media appearances, some are TV features, including the leading TV station in Kenya, Citizen TV, and other leading TV and PR channels in Uganda and Rwanda
We support multiple developer communities in Kenya, including Google Developer Groups, Google student developer groups, amongst others
We are in the first cohort of Olympus that was launched this month and we have 5 incubated products. These products were funneled from the hackathons we have hosted
Because of our efforts, ICP is a household name in Kenya and Africa in general. Before the hub, ICP was not known in Kenya.
All these items are achieved at low cost. Evidence of everything mentioned above can be provided on demand.
Additionally, our hub has 11 permanent staff. All these people would become unemployed just because of sentiments you hold towards me. Not to mention the number of people we contract to give us services like PR companies, influencers, merchandise printers and the likes.
Most of you dont know how corruption works in Kenya , I will make a detailed post on how she exactly does it in some few days. I would right now but I have some work to finish first.
This nonsense should stop immediately. TonyArtworld, you go crying on to a person’s job and workplace because they expressed an opinion about a draft bill in their country that you happen to differ on. Grow the hell up. I’m building in the web 3 world in Kenya for nearly 10 years nows, and I can say I’ve seen Yvonne accomplish a HELL of a lot on all fronts, beyond the nice summary she just posted above.
@TonyArtworld what have you done in the blockchain space that makes you stand out?I also have never heard of you Antony Kim.I Think you are one of those people hired to just go round tarnishing Yvonne’s name for the sake of making others happy and hurt her.Just an opinionated tweet makes you say this false things.Please put some respect to her and share what you have done in the community and how you are building the Blockchain sector.This is cyber bulling and you should not do this here.Its the wrong platform to put such comments.Kindly apologize to Yvonne and the whole ICP Hub community in Kenya.
I applaud you for making this public. Some of us would never have had the chance to tell our side of story but here we are.
I’ll tell you my story. ICP Hub Kenya formally known as Kushites was started by 3 co-founders. I was one of them until I decided to step down 3 months later after false accusations and questionable leadership from Yvonne. What’s the point of co-founding when you’re treated unfairly and trash talked because you disagree with them?When you’re made a leader, you weren’t given a crown, you are given a responsibility to bring out the best in others.
To make matters worse she owes me $1500, an amount she has failed to pay up/totally ignored.
The other two co-founders who might also tell their story stepped down a few months later due to her incompetence and failure to pay up as well.
Could you name a few projects that ICP.Hub Kenya has onboarded into the ICP ecosystem - ie. applied to a developer grant and now working on it? What are their Twitter handles?
By the end of the day, this is the only measure of success that matters.
Not to discount your effort, but all the above 12 marketing-related results can be bought with money. They look good on pictures and Twitter certainly, but wouldn’t help ICP that much if they don’t bring in serious developers. Github repo doesn’t count by the way. Adding up 10 hello world demos doesn’t advance the IC.
The aim is to build locally to scale globally.
It is recommended for each hub to follow the funnel model. However we are given independence to adjust based on what we believe works best for our regions.
As ICP Hub Kenya, we have successfully accomplished Evangelism and Education. That is why the above are mostly evangelism and education activities. Now we move down to Incubation, where we are working with Olympus.
Additionally, ICP Hubs are supported by Community grants since they are community led and driven. So as of now, you may not see projects on developer grants from most of the Hubs. Especially in regions that are still trying to establish themselves in the blockchain scene.
However, we have some great github repos from our education sector which unfortunately you don’t want to see.
Thanks @mckennzie for starting this conversation for us. I happen to be one of the supposed Co-founders of ICP Hub Kenya formerly known as Kushite ICP Hub. EA.
I too resigned 6 months later due to poor leadership, toxicity in the company and unprofessionalism from Yvonne.
First of all Yvonne named all the 3 of us (at different stages) as cofounders and indicated so on the website but she went ahead and registered the company as a soul proprietor without informing any of us. Upon questioning this, the third cofounder who may or may not come to tell his story here was sabotaged and frustrated so much to a point where he too had to leave the company.
Secondly, this is directed to you @YvonneK I can say the achievements you have cited up there are most likely to be true, many of them were achieved even when I was still in the company but the question is HOW were they achieved? How many people did you step on while working on that?
The P.R achievements you boast of for instance, I am the one that helped you say 90% both local and international P.R were done by me but you DID NOT PAY ME for everything! YOU STILL OWE ME MONEY for it. (I have receipts and an ONGOING COURT CASE)
You have since adamantly refused to pay me.
While I may not question your knowledge in blockchain(I don’t know what you know and what you don’t), I deeply question your management skills, leadership skills and integrity. You take advantage of your position to swindle people by refusing to pay them their hard earned money, to manipulate people and intimidate them. You trashtalk your own staff and people you yourself has appointed as leaders making their working environment very unbearable coz how can you lead a team which your own boss tells them trash about you? You employ people and raise their salaries based on how much you are fond of them.How close they are to you. You may defend yourself all you want but deep down, you know all these accusations are true.
On contrallly av been attending the ICP hub twitter session and i have learnt alot on Blockchain . Had a chance to work with her and she’s a great person and deliverables are evident
You have no idea how much I’ve learnt via the ICP HUB on the sessions i have attended on X. I have personally worked with Yvone and she is a very professional and sweet soul.
I struggled hard with this one but I have (as moderator) decided that I will close down this thread. I will explain why I decided to do this and why it was hard.
I decided to do this because:
It’s not really about anything related to the IC’s technology or governance. Its about critiquing grants given by a non profit (dfinity) to a person.
The comments may be valid or invalid. I can’t genuinely tell since I’m not familiar with this subject… but both pro and con comments lean towards “this person is great” or “this person is not great.” Neither are really the kind of design thinking or dialogue for this forum.
I will not delete or remove any comments for this thread, but ask that conversations like this instead please happen on other ICP social media platforms.
Madam Yvonne Kagondu has been doing an excellent job at ICP Kenya, we’ve learnt a lot as youths and we’re even willing to explore and learn more about the modern tech, thanks to her interventions, she’s transformed the lives of many.
I recently attended an amazing session with ICP hub kenya. The insights and benefits are unparalleled! Grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow with such a dedicated team.
