Kuwait’s leading mobile telecom innovator, Zain Group which serves more than 49.5 million customers in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa today has joined the highly innovative Hedera Governing Council.
Zain is the first company from the Middle East region to associate with the Council, joining a list of prestigious global innovators including Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, LG Electronics, Magalu, Nomura, Swirlds, Swisscom Blockchain, Tata Communications, University College London, and Wipro.
Hedera Hashgraph offers a next-generation form of distributed consensus that is quicker, fairer and more secure than traditional blockchains. It provides a new way for people or organizations who do not know or trust each other to securely cooperate and transact online without the requirement for a trusted mediator. Through its cooperation on the Hedera Council, Zain Group will obtain comprehensive initial insights into the trends and applications in the distributed ledger technology (DLT) space and will be able to evaluate opportunities to develop services within its own field of operation.
Hedera Hashgraph’s patented technology platform addresses the universally relevant concern of the environment as its power usage is super-efficient, employing a fraction of the electricity that blockchain platforms use. This is in line with Zain Group’s membership of and engagement to the Carbon Disclosure Project, which presents a reporting framework and guidance to address climate change.
Bader Al Kharafi Zain Vice-Chairman and Group CEO – Zain
“We feel a sense of purpose in joining the Hedera Governing Council, which has numerous blue chip, innovation-driven organizations all interested in driving the development of blockchains and the wider DLT space, which we have already noted has phenomenal potential. Council membership provides Zain first-hand exposure to cutting-edge and secure technologies that drive innovation, e-commerce and B2B across the region.”
Mr. Al-Kharafi maintained, “From our own perspective, the growing list of new services and applications we have and continue to develop in areas such as the Group API platform; mobile money and fintech; e-health; drones; the Internet of Things; and 5G all lend themselves to further enhancement through blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. Our participation in the Council also speaks to another pillar of Zain’s corporate strategy, which is to collaborate with leading industry players to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes and thereby improve the products and services we can deliver to our customers.”
Hedera intends to fulfill its vision to build a safer, fairer, more secure internet through a focus on addressing four fundamental hurdles to the adoption of public DLT – technology, security, stability, and governance. For the vision to achieve impactful results, the network requires to be administered by representatives from a broad range of market sectors and geographies, each with world-class expertise in their respective industries.
Mance Harmon CEO – Hedera
“We are delighted to have Zain Group join the Council, given the company’s sound track record of innovation, and professionalism in the development and delivery of cutting-edge mobile services and applications. We believe the Council will be enriched greatly by this first organization to join us from the Middle East region, given Zain Group’s eight country footprint. We hope Zain will take full advantage of the opportunity to immerse itself in hashgraph and distributed ledger technologies and gain first-hand knowledge of new technologies and use cases developed on the Hedera network.”
The Hedera Governing Council’s members offer technical expertise to maintain the technical roadmap, business expertise to guide on business operations, and legal expertise to further navigate the evolving regulatory environment.
