Delegate address: 0x3966bD0e77B3A42B8cA4fC8A39EE55e1509eC432
Delegate ENS Address: gov.borderless.eth
Mission
- Be a voice of African founders & builders in major DAOs.
- Educate DAOs on the African market.
- Help DAOs allocate resources to the most meaningful communities and projects in Africa.
- Bring African modes of collaborative governance into conversation with global systems.
Principles
Drawing from the preamble, we can outline four key principles:
- Collaboration
- This looks like taking responsibility for excellent individual work which is made excellent precisely because it naturally incorporates feedback and input from others and is never considered finished or final.
- This does not look like stoking online arguments for the sake of proving we are right or intelligent or better informed.
- Participation
- This looks like opening up decision making to as many relevant people as possible through intentional and well-crafted invitations to meaningful dialogue and shared work.
- This does not look like the tyranny of structurelessness or a free-for-all.
- Transparency
- This looks like a living and courageous culture which preempts how communication can be interpreted and always defaults to asking critical questions in visible spaces and constructive ways.
- This does not look like being explicit just for the sake of it, or stoking sensationalism and personal dramas.
- Plurality
- This looks like learning how to engage constructively with the discomfort inherent in real diversity and learning how to love that which is different without needing to integrate, incorporate, or agree with others.
- This does not look like superficial hospitality which never engages critically with unfamiliar or strange people and perspectives, and smothers otherness with stilted politeness.
Inspiration
We take our inspiration primarily from various African models we have grown up around, as well as Audrey Tang and the g0v project in Taiwan.
Africa
Ultimately, we care about substantive results rather than formal structures. Which is to say, rather than advocating for the formal “freedom to move”, we aim for co-creating a culture of hospitality. This is because knowing you will be welcomed in unfamiliar places by strangers is what actually enables you to go anywhere, rather than having the abstract formal freedom, but none of the practical necessities to actually go.
Mutual aid is the precondition for individual sovereignty. Governance requires integrity, humility, and a profound sense of responsibility towards society.
This line of thinking comes from a long and diverse lineage. We illustrate the tip of the iceberg below:
- We honour Steve Bantu Biko and Mamphela Ramphele for their work on Black Consciousness, recognising that collective liberation requires reclaiming personal freedom. Their work is foundational to all we do.
- We appreciate Chinua Achebe’s service-oriented leadership which harkens back to ancient African practices and beliefs around community as a place to practice respect, shared responsibility, and collective well-being. When honesty and empathy are reflected in leaders, the same traits and naturally inspired in the community, and this keeps us knit together and oriented towards a shared vision, acting against the alienation implicit in any colonial form of power.
- While we must participate, for now, in foreign and alienating languages, we acknowledge Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and use his work on language to craft our English carefully such that it more accurately reflects the collaborative, conversational, slow approach to consensus that is baked into many African cultures. We attempt to bend our English to accommodate the diversity of perspectives which come from Africa, attempting to leave it open to influence and strangeness, rather than falling into the alienating trap of a colonizing language that presents itself as conclusive and confident.
- In line with Achille Mbembe, we will advocate for systems that explicitly cultivates social cohesion and which are rooted in respect, mutual recognition, and the sanctity of life. We reject domination and disposability of any kind, knowing too well the ways this leads to marginalization and violence. We aim for a shared humanity, rather than for control over life and death, or over who may be rich and who ends up poor (which are ultimately the same thing). Leadership must be accountable to people and committed to life-affirming practices.
- With respect and admiration, we borrow Sophie Oluwole’s Yoriba term Omoluwabi, a concept describing a person of good character who embodies virtues like honesty, respect, and responsibility. Unlike Western individualistic models, which often prioritize personal success, Omoluwabi emphasizes character and responsibility towards others, fostering ethical conduct that benefits the entire community. As she does, we pair this with the continent’s greatest gift - Ubuntu - which is the recognition that a human being only becomes human in relationship with other beings.
- We stand with Wole Soyinka in recognising that justice is a necessary counter-balance to power, and that it must be lived by each individual in their own life, as well as reflected in the ethical standards to which leaders are held accountable. In fact, as seen in his later plays, power is not an end in itself, but a means of achieving justice and social welfare, or creating the cultural and communal conditions required for dignified and honourable ways of living together. To do this, we must reject greed and despotism, protecting the vulnerable and fostering balance.
Civic Hackers
We appreciate Audrey Tang’s focus on cultivating a civic hacker mentality, which sees governance as a co-created, adaptive, experimental and open process which depends upon - and must constantly call forth - citizen contribution.
Like Tang and her collaborators, we seek to create solutions to problems people actually care about, because they experience them in their daily lives.
We particularly like Audrey’s job description:
“When we see the Internet of Things, let’s make it an Internet of beings.
When we see virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality.
When we see machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning.
When we see user experience, let’s make it about human experience.
Whenever we hear that a singularity is near, let us always remember that plurality is here.”
Conflict of Interest
At Gov.Borderless, we uphold transparency and integrity as core principles in all our endeavors. While we engage actively across various ecosystems, we currently do not perceive any conflicts of interest affecting our work. However, we remain diligent and will promptly disclose any potential conflicts if they arise.