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ABSTRACT / "Sarafu” is the name of a digital complementary currency circulating alongside the official tender in Kenya. With a GDP of more than 1 million Euros in 2020, the Sarafu currency network is expanding and becoming increasingly important for the survival of Kenyan marginalised communities. Red Cross and UNICEF are already cooperating with the promoting NGO (Grassroots Economics) in order to adopt such technology as community-based disaster response strategy in some cases.
In the first part of this work I will provide some basic illustrations describing the network structure and its evolution, from 2019 to 2020. In particular, I will try to understand if and how the COVID pandemic affected the functioning of the currency network. In the second part of this work I will briefly illustrate the main theories behind the analysis of payment systems which justify my interest on cyclic motifs. Finally, I will briefly illustrate the current state of my work, the structure of the proposed algorithms, and the metrics elaborated to analyse the performance of the system.
BIO / Since his BA in Development Economics, Teodoro has been studying community-led sustainable development projects, deeply devoting his research to community self-reliance, empowerment, and resilience. In particular, he is interested in such projects adopting economic, monetary and financial innovations, such as social, community and complementary currency systems. Since 2014 and 2015, Teodoro has been working as a volunteer for the IJCCR (International Journal on Community Currency Systems) and RAMICS (Research Association Monetary Innovation Community and Complementary Currency Systems) During his MSc in Economics, he had the opportunity to study Complexity Economics and Economic Networks. Finally, Teodoro concluded his Master with a dissertation entitled "Multilayer social network with revealed homophily", where he tried to suggest an algorithm to predict online (and offline) behavior of individuals. Teodor is a member of the research team CCUBI-NetFi at Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS).