As Sierra Leone's president Ernest Bai Koroma leaves office after serving 10 years (two five-year terms) which is the maximum allowed constitutionally, Sierra Leoneans have had to pick one candidate out of a pool of 16, including the ruling party’s Samura Kamara, the foreign minister, and Julius Maada Bio, a former military head of state.

In this presidential Election, the country becomes the first that uses blockchain in a Presidential election.

Created by Leonardo Gammar of Agora, the system stores citizens' votes inside an immutable ledger, offering instant access to the election results.

"Anonymized votes/ballots are being recorded on Agora’s blockchain, which will be publicly available for any interested party to review, count and validate," said Gammar. "This is the first time a government election is using blockchain technology."

“Sierra Leone wishes to create an environment of trust with the voters in a contentious election, especially looking at how the election will be publicly viewed post-election. By using blockchain as a means to immutably record ballots and results, the country hopes to create legitimacy around the election and reduce fall-out from opposition parties,” he said.

Previously, blockchain being used on elections has little to no proof of concept. Here, Sierra Leone isn't only completed the first-ever blockchain-powered election, but also captured a seemingly acceptable plurality of votes.

What's more, the country with 7.4 million has a goal to improve election by reducing corruption in the Voting process, as well as reducing voting costs by cutting out paper ballots.

Gammar said that blockchain's advantage comes from its decentralized nature.

"Other electronic voting machines are ‘block boxes’ that have been increasingly shown to be vulnerable to security attacks. For that reason, many U.S. states and foreign nations have been moving back to paper," he said. "If you believe that most countries will use some form of digital voting 50 years from now, then blockchain is the only technology that has been created which can provide an end-to-end verifiable and fully-transparent voting solution for this future."

One country a success, Gammar and his team have plans to expand the product to other African countries,, including the rest of the world.