Every year, about 15 billion trees are cut down globally, and across Africa, deforestation rates has surpassed the global annual average of 0.8 percent. An African startup is trying to be a part of the solution to this deforestation crisis. Through a social impact initiative, the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) wants to plant and assign more than 200 million trees across Africa by 2024 before the end of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent. From any part of the world, My Roots in Africa Project, makes it possible for anyone to place a request to have a tree named, planted or gifted in honor of themselves or anyone they love. To further personalize the service, MIPAD partnered with Decagon Institute to deploy data science and artificial intelligence to identify and geo-tag trees planted using blockchain technology. This will enable its subscribers to know the exact location of their allocated tree and be able to see it using satellite imagery including Google Maps. It also helps prevent allocating the same tree to more than one person.
SOURCE: CNN