Kenya picked as home of first digital incubation centre
Cyber cafe customers in a Nairobi outlet. Kenya has been selected as the home of the first of five incubation centres around the world that aim to promote a knowledge-based economy.
Kenya has been selected as the home of the first of five incubation centres around the world that aim to promote a knowledge-based economy.
The new hub named m:Lab was launched on Thursday with the aim of creating a new space for Kenyan developers to collaborate on developing applications for mobile phones.
Kenya was selected due to the country’s rising profile as a software development hub.
The development means that Kenyan SMEs in the sector will now be have access to a 13 million Euro kitty over the next two years to fund their growth.
The joint partnership between infoDev, a donor-funded ICT for development agency hosted by the World Bank, the Finnish Foreign Ministry and Nokia, will provide the funding for the initiative.
“We are helping businesses improve value in the sectors that have the most potential to contribute jobs and exports – for Kenya, this means ICT, agri-business and tourism,” said Johannes Zutt, country manager for the World Bank.
The programme brings together three tracks – mobile application development, business incubation and technology entrepreneurship – together with a supporting track of analytical work in the field of ICTs and Innovation Systems in Agriculture.
Information PS Bitange Ndemo said the country was hoping to push the contribution of the ICT sector past agriculture to being the country’s most significant GDP producer.
“We aim to raise the contribution of ICTs to the economy from the current Sh5 billion to over Sh25 billion in the next five years, and to do this, we must put in place sustainable solutions to enable the growth of SMEs in the sector,” said Mr Ndemo.
Analysts say the technology sector has increasingly been driven by an emerging middle-class population with potential to buy smart phones as well as rising industry investments by players.
Demand for mobile apps presents a huge potential for developers, brands and end-users but players will need to invest time and resources if they are to fully gain from the fast-growing mobile marketing global industry, expected to be worth Sh1 trillion (US$17.5 billion) by 2012.
“Mobile application marketing is a rapidly growing engagement and advertising channel for local and international brands today. Increase in use of apps by young population and emerging middle-class is spurning an unprecedented growth which may help companies focus on more eye-balls of their target markets in a totally new dimension,” said Mr Oyolla.
Locally, the growth of mobile internet subscription coupled with a significant adoption of smart phones are key factors driving the mobile application segment in Kenya. In its January 2011 report, Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) noted between July and September 2010 that 98 per cent of the Internet market share being through mobile devices.
“In the end, we expect to have win-win situation. Developers will have full local support to develop and sell in a global marketplace to millions of consumers while brands will be able to engage their customers via immersive mobile apps for continuous relevance and loyalty,” said Mr Oyolla.
