Technology

Kenya on path to joining digital world’s big league

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Surfing the Web. Konza Technology City has the potential to create 100,000 jobs. FILE

The Financial Times, like The Economist, has rarely had positive things to say about Kenya, particularly under the Kibaki administration.

It was, therefore, a most pleasant surprise to come across an article written by the FT’s East Africa Correspondent, Ms Katrina Manson, titled Kenya’s ‘Silicon Savannah’ to challenge India on IT, published online on June 6.

Ms Manson’s report on Kenya is a classic example of good journalism — it has all the hallmarks of great reporting, analysis and commentary, including hindsight, insight and foresight. This is indeed rare, coming from a western journalist reporting on a Third World reality. Above all, it informs and educates the reader even as it entertains him or her. Ultimately, it enlightens. And this is as it should be.

The term Silicon Savannah, which echoes California’s Silicon Valley, the global home of computerisation, was first deployed with reference to Kenya on the website of the Konza Technology City (initially called the Malili Technology Park). This $7 billion city is Kenya’s single most ambitious and biggest development project ever.

It involves no less than the building of an entire technopolis from the grassroots up. Built on 5,000 acres of what is now ranchland, the Konza e-city will come complete with skyscrappers, hotels, international schools, a world-class hospital, a financial district, a high-speed mass transport system and integrated infrastructure. It will put the capital city’s CBD completely in the shade as it will come with smart fully-computerised buildings, thoroughfares and other infrastructure. Coming on top of other Vision 2030 infrastructure and ICT rollouts, Konza e-city will be the jewel in the crown of a new and completely transformed Kenya.

It has the potential to create 100,000 jobs, the vast majority of them in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. The comparison with India in the FT headline story on Kenya is indeed a suggestion that Konza e-city could well become a global call centre, placing Kenya in the big leagues of the digital world economy.

The writer also salutes Kenya’s rising, indeed burgeoning, middle class. She cites an African Development Bank report on Kenya that tentatively puts the middle class at an unprecedented 44.9 per cent of the population. While some might doubt this, ICT and mobile banking statistics would seem to point in that direction.

This is a hugely significant point, for, among other things, it means that the phenomenon of poverty reduction that has been registered in a number of other nations in far-flung places around the world could well be under way in Kenya. Tens of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty through big-picture government policies wedded to ICT advances in countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRICS. My dream is to see the acronym correctly spelled as BRICKS in not too distant future with Kenya’s K. Computerisation and the Internet are history’s greatest generators of wealth and prosperity — and they are in Kenya to stay.

Dr Ndemo is the PS, Information and Communications ministry.