Dar es Salaam, Aug 31, 2026 (Tanzania Daily News/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
Tanzania is set to produce new Bitcoin developers courtesy of an impactful Lightning Developer Bootcamp scheduled from September 21 to 25 in Dar es Salaam.
It is a five-day hands-on training program focused on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network whose goal is to equip participants with skills to building real Lightning-powered applications.
Collaboratively, the training has been organised by Africa Free Routing (AFR) and BitcoinSafariTz designed for people who want practical skills, mentorship and to join a community shaping the future of money in Africa.
Briefing reporters in the city recently, Lead Organiser, BitcoinSafariTz Mr Aggrey Shayo highlighted that trainees will walk away with practicable ways on how to survive in Bitcoin industry.
"A lot is expected during the training like learning Bitcoin fundamentals, lightning network training, practical building on how to run Bitcoin Core Code, open source contribution as well as community and hackathon," he said.
He named Simon Njeru, a software developer and co-founder of BitDevs Nairobi as one of the Bootcamp instructors whose expertise will help a lot to sharpen skills of trainees.
He added that the training is targeting builders who want to create real products on Bitcoin mainly students and developers in training, Fintech Developers and Blockchain Developers, technology enthusiasts as well as anyone building the next big thing in payments or exploring decentralized technology in Africa.
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Commenting on immediate effects of the training, Mr Shayo revealed that they expect to see new lightning developers as participants will go from beginners to being able to run a node and build Lightning apps.
"Also, we expect real projects launched because the hackathon will produce working demonstrations of Lightning-powered applications for local use cases not forgetting open source contributions and many others," he said.
Breaking down on why Tanzania is hosting this Bootcamp for the first time, he pointed out that the country has a growing developer talent characterised by a young, tech-savvy population with many of them eager to learn but are hindered by limited access to Bitcoin training.
"Again, there is a real need for lightning solutions bearing in mind that our economy relies heavily on mobile money and cross border trade... lightning offers instant, low-cost payments that can solve real problems for merchants, remittances, and financial inclusion.
"Furthermore, AFR's mission is to support builders across Africa and we have already run bootcamps in other countries, and Tanzania is the next key hub. Through BitcoinSafariTz, we have seen strong community demand...so it is the right time to go deeper with a full 5-day technical program," he said.
According to him, given the success of Lightning Bootcamps in other African cities like Nairobi, Johannesburg, Lusaka, Kampala, Cape Town, Rwanda and other Africa countries, their plan is to make the Tanzania bootcamp an annual event so that they can continuously grow a pipeline of Lightning developers in East Africa.
COMTEX_491793233/2029/2026-08-31T08:34:55
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