- IOTA and TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) team up to digitize the export process for Kenya’s flower exporters, airliners, and freight forwarders, making trade more efficient and competitive.
- The key technology behind this initiative involves using IOTA distributed ledgers to register every event within supply chains and ScyllaDB NoSQL for resilient and scalable storage of data.
Unraveling the complexities of global trade and creating a seamless, transparent supply chain has long been a challenge. Enter IOTA and TradeMark East Africa (TMEA), whose combined efforts are now turning this ambition into reality.
Decoding the Digitization: IOTA and TMEA’s Vision
The IOTA Foundation envisions a future where every trade item in the global supply chain can be traced to its origin, thanks to distributed ledgers. This vision has started to materialize in East Africa, where IOTA has partnered with TMEA to streamline the export process. For an average African entrepreneur, a single transaction involves a staggering 200 communications, including 96 paper documents.
Is it possible to track every trade item in the global supply chain? This is becoming a reality thanks to @iota and @TradeMarkAfrica. José Manuel Cantera explains the technology behind this initiative. https://t.co/sF2rb49kZK#ScyllaDB #supplychain #NoSQL
— ScyllaDB (@ScyllaDB) July 28, 2023
Through their novel system, IOTA and TMEA aim to cut down these staggering numbers significantly. The system anchors critical trade documents on the Tangle, a new type of distributed ledger technology, and shares them with customs in destination countries. This practice not only speeds up the export process but also gives African companies a competitive edge globally.
Breaking Down the Technology: How Does It Work?
The architecture of this system, as explained by José Manuel Cantera, Technical Analyst & Project Lead at IOTA Foundation, hinges on three main pillars. The first pillar is the use of EPCIS 2.0 data serialization formats to ensure data interoperability. The second is the deployment of IOTA distributed ledgers to register every event occurring within the supply chain. The third is ScyllaDB NoSQL, which provides scalable, resilient storage for persistent data.
Diving Deeper: Use Cases of Supply Chain Digitization
Let’s look more closely at two specific areas where this architecture is being applied – cross-border trade and end-to-end supply chain traceability.
Cross-border trade involves multiple layers of documentation and procedural details, all of which need to be meticulously managed. The system designed by the IOTA Foundation streamlines this process by allowing different actors in trade, including government agencies and private traders, to share and verify documents quickly and efficiently.
The second area, end-to-end supply chain traceability, is about tracing the provenance of trade items. To ensure the reliability of sustainability claims, it’s critical to be able to identify and trace the history, distribution, location, and application of products, parts, and materials.
The IOTA Foundation addresses these challenges through a unique mix of core technologies: data interoperability, scalable data stores, and scalable, permissionless feeless distributed ledger technology. The model developed allows stakeholders to share transactional information regarding the movement and status of objects, both physical and digital. When coupled with ScyllaDB’s scalable data store, this ensures every critical event in a supply chain has a durable record.
Ultimately, the collaboration of IOTA’s distributed ledger technology and ScyllaDB’s data store solutions has paved the way for a new era of supply chain management – one characterized by increased transparency, efficiency, and reliability. This innovative approach could very well be the key to unlocking the full potential of global trade in the digital age.
