Emmanuelle Ganne is the Senior Analyst at the World Trade Organisations’ Economic Research Department. She is an international trade expert with over 15 years of experience in international trade, trade policy, global governance, and diplomacy. In this podcast we discuss whether or not blockchain can revolutionize international trade.

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Her blockchain adventure started at the WTO in 2017 and it was ‘love at first sight”. Because her direct colleagues at the WTO didn’t quite understand the technology and its transformational opportunities for international trade, she decided to author the book "Can blockchain revolutionise international trade?". The book tried to build a bridge between the private sector and the IT community on the one hand and trade officials on the other.

Emmanuelle’s journey over the last two or three years has been to help people understand this unique technology and to create an enabling environment that allows it to be deployed on a large scale to make a difference for international trade.

 
What is blockchain?

 

Emmanuelle took the interesting approach of defining blockchain from the perspective of how she explained it to her teenage niece. At that time her niece’s school had a Pokémon craze going on. Every day, she would bring to school a big box of Pokémon cards that she would trade with her friends.

To explain blockchain Emmanuelle, asked her niece to try and imagine if she had an app on her mobile that would store digital twins of all of her Pokémon cards. Having such an app meant she wouldn’t need to bring her big box of Pokémon cards to school. She could digitally trade them as each card has its own unique digital twin like a fingerprint of that paper card.

Normally you can make copies of digital documents very easily but with blockchain you cannot. The mobile app can thus also allow her niece to trace the history of the card including which one of her friends previously owned that card.

Blockchain is like this mobile app. It’s like a giant repository of digital records stored in a specific order that ensures transparency and is highly secure as it also provides the guarantee that the information hasn’t been tampered with. This is achieved because everyone has a copy of the transactions. What you see is what everyone sees. These factors combined provides an environment of trust which means Emmanuelle’s niece can trade with not just her friends but with other individuals knowing that the digital twins of the cards aren’t fake and that all transactions are real and recorded.

Emmanuelle’s explanation of blockchain has some similarities to how Bettina Warburg explains what is blockchain to a 5 year old, a teen, a college student, a graduate student and an expert.

 
Can blockchain revolutionise international trade?
In November 2018, Emmanuelle published a comprehensive report entitled “Can Blockchain revolutionize international trade?” and then a year later in November 2019 she published the report “Blockchain & DLT in Trade - A Reality Check”. Whilst both of these reports are WTO publications, Emmanuelle clarifies that the opinions expressed in these publications are hers and are not meant to represent the opinions of the WTO and its members.