In 2012, the UN Secretary stated that corruption prevented 30 percent of all development assistance from reaching its destination (UNSG, 2012). This thesis discusses the importance of trust and transparency in the charity sector, and how technology, specifically blockchain, could address these two factors. This paper aims to demonstrate this by developing a minimum viable product on the Ethereum blockchain, called the LoveEconomy, for a local South African non-profit organization, the Secret Love Project. The LoveEconomy is designed as a circular economy, whereby local businesses and users of the platform benefit from each other, whilst also supporting the charity, which takes care of homeless people in Cape Town. Blockchain has many features that could potentially transform charitable giving and aid distribution by enhancing transparency, reducing costs through disintermediation, and enabling new mechanisms for monitoring and tracking charities' impact. Trust and transparency are closely linked in the charity industry, as transparency about the distribution of the funds and the end impact are critical for the trust of the public (Populus and Charity Commission For England & Wales, 2018).

Stokvel, in South Africa, is used as an umbrella term for Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs) which are informal financial associations where the members agree to regularly contribute a set amount to a fund. In South Africa, there are 11.4 million stokvel members which make up about 30% of the adult population. These stokvels save up to R49 billion per year yet, many of the people in these communities that save this money find themselves unable to gain access to credit and savings facilities. An agile and iterative approach was used to develop a web-based stokvel management application that allows groups to adopt a structure where there are borrowers who pay interest, and savers and investors who will receive interest on their savings. Four different evaluations were carried out on the system namely, (1) system testing, to evaluate the implemented features and their correctness, (2) a heuristic evaluation with a set of expert evaluators, (3) usability testing and (4) user acceptance testing with potential users of the application. The evaluators and users gave the application a combined score of 76.875, which translates to a good interface on the System Usability Scale. The users accepted the application, however, the system usability testing showed that the interface needed improvement. The system was developed using multiple iterations but time constraints did not allow for multiple iterations of user testing. It is best to have multiple iterations of user testing so that the user experience feedback can be incorporated into the following iterations

In this study, a methodology is presented where a hybrid system combining an evolutionary algorithm with artificial neural networks (ANNs) is designed to make weekly directional change forecasts on the USD by inferring a prediction using closing spot rates of three currency pairs: EUR/USD, GBP/USD and CHF/USD. The forecasts made by the genetically trained ANN are compared to those made by a new variation of the simple moving average (MA) trading strategy, tailored to the methodology, as well as a random model. The same process is then repeated for the three major cryptocurrencies namely: BTC/USD, ETH/USD and XRP/USD. The overall prediction accuracy, uptrend and downtrend prediction accuracy is analyzed for all three methods within the fiat currency as well as the cryptocurrency contexts. The best models are then evaluated in terms of their ability to convert predictive accuracy to a profitable investment given an initial investment. The best model was found to be the hybrid model on the basis of overall prediction accuracy and accrued returns.

The impact of apartheid on land registration is still evident within South Africa. The Deeds Registry is facing a current backlog in registering an estimated 900,000 title deeds. Providing formal ownership, through title, is seen as necessary for unlocking the 'dead capital’ of unregistered property, fostering access to capital markets and poverty alleviation. Within the current legislative framework, the Deeds Registry only accepts paper documents, which introduces inefficiencies. To increase the number of deeds processed per day, automation of manual data capture is tested using an OCR pipeline. To adapt to the linguistics used in title deeds, text analysis and parsing is done using Regex. Uploading the scanned title deeds onto IPFS is as an additional security measure included in the pipeline. Previous research has failed to apply these techniques to formal land registration or other South African government institutions. The preliminary results show that this pipeline has an overall accuracy of 89.6%. This represents the comparison of the expected output to the output extracted using OCR. The results are significantly less accurate when classifying handwritten and stamped information. Thus, further measures are required to increase accuracy for these fields. The OCR accuracy was 98.3% for the fields extracted from typed text characters. This is within the accuracy range of manual data capture. A secondary quality check, which is currently done on manual data capture, would still be necessary to ensure accuracy of inputs. Overall it appears that this application would be appropriate for incorporation into the Deeds Registry to streamline their processes while ensuring title deed validity.

Self-sovereign identity defines a system in which an entity can generate and maintain their own proof of identity. There are several solutions aimed at providing this service and storing the relevant information on a blockchain. We describe how to develop such a system using Ethereum’s smart contract platform and a browser-based application, and we demonstrate its use in a corporate that sells more than one funeral insurance product. Individuals and organizations should be able to create claims on their identities, however, only reputable organizations can verify these claims. These operations are executed by functions contained in the smart contracts and the transactions can be stored on a blockchain. A major benefit of this innovation is that an identity can be easily re-used and we show how an insurance department can do this using credentials already requested by another department. This method allows for much needed efficiency over the current system.

In South Africa and many other countries, credit registers and credit scores are used to determine how much credit a person can get access to, as well as the interest rate which they will be charged. In addition to this, some companies (such as insurance companies and rental agencies), use this data as part of the process to vet potential clients before allowing them to sign a contract. Part of the problem with this approach is that only certain records are stored on these credit registers. This excludes a large number of individuals, specifically those who are unbanked, those who have not got access to credit from formal institutions or those who do not own property and therefore pay their landlord for utilities. The purpose of this research is to determine the feasibility of using blockchain to store payment histories from small businesses to give their clients access to a credit record. The case study for this research will look specifically at a business which offers insurance to individuals living in informal settlements. This could be extended to many other businesses who work within informal settlements which allow cash payments on a regular basis for services offered. Shops in informal marketplaces which allow people to take products on credit and only pay later could also be included. By storing these transactions on the blockchain, individuals who would not usually have access to a credit history will have access to records of transactions that they have made and will be able to use these to show their ability and willingness to meet their financial obligations. This paper provides insight into existing credit registers and the process followed to build an informal credit register on the blockchain. The research covers an investigation into the feasibility of the project and it was found that this could is feasible and could add a lot of value, especially to those who do not have a credit history. There are many considerations, such as speed, security and costs which need to be taken into account, but these are outweighed by the benefits of the blockchain.

My thesis is going to focus on the development of a standalone, web based, machine learning educational platform. This platform will have a specific focus on neural networks. This tool will have the primary intention to provide a theoretical background to the mathematics of neural networks and thereafter to allow users to train their own networks on regression problems of their own creation. This is so as to provide the user with both theoretical, and first-hand, experience in the applications and functions of artificial intelligence. The primary success metric of this project will be how informative it is to the user. The key deliverable will be a fully functional prototype in additional to a written piece inclusive of a literature review and any other relevant findings and conclusions.

The study of network robustness is a critical tool in the understanding of complex interconnected systems such as the Internet, which due to digitalization, gives rise to an increasing prevalence of cyberattacks. Robustness is when a network maintains its basic functionality even under failure of some of its components, in this instance being nodes or edges. Despite the importance of the Internet in the global economic system, it is rare to find empirical analyses of the global pattern of Internet traffic data established via backbone connections, which can be defined as an interconnected network of nodes and edges between which bandwidth flows. Hence in this thesis, I use metrics based on graph properties of network models to evaluate the robustness of the backbone network, which is further supported by international cybersecurity ratings. These cybersecurity ratings are adapted from the Global Cybersecurity Index which measures countries' commitments to cybersecurity and ranks countries based on their cybersecurity strategies. Ultimately this empirical analysis follows a three-step process of firstly mapping the Internet as a network of networks, followed by analysing the various networks and country profiles, and finally assessing each regional network's robustness. By using TeleGeography and ITU data, the results show that the regions with countries which have higher cybersecurity ratings in turn have more robust networks, when compared to regions with countries which have lower cybersecurity ratings.

Cryptocurrencies are one of the most exciting financial technologies that have emerged since the global financial crisis. It has spurred on a new financial ecosystem looking to enhance the traditional financial system. Many of the economic functions such as payments, investment, trading and capital raising have made it to the cryptocurrency industry. Regulators, who have not universally agreed on how to approach regulating cryptocurrency activity, are seeking the best approaches to ensuring financial stability. This paper looks at the risk posed by cryptocurrencies and how to regulate the activities. It applies this directly to the South African context and finds that cryptocurrency activities are easily accommodated within the South African regulatory framework with a set of minor definition changes.

This thesis presents Axone, a system that enables decentralized collaborative creation of digital products through interconnected digital content blocks. Axone provides the provenance of a digital product by storing its history since creation in an immutable Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) data structure. This history comprises digital content blocks used in its creation, including how they referenced each other in the development of the final digital product. Through referencing, credit attribution is achieved and royalty fees due to the referenced content block are recorded and enforced. Content creators can concurrently work on a succeeding content block to produce various versions of unique digital products from the same original content block. Axone focuses on written work enabling different authors to contribute to a book (the digital product) in the form of chapters (digital content blocks), until its completion. Axone uses blockchain technology and web monetization to provide provenance for each chapter and to stream payments to authors.