The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) is set to upgrade its ICT infrastructure in the wake of the recent complaints of intermittent outages, on key systems including its cargo clearing systems.
Disclosures show that the agency has awarded contracts in excess of Sh340 million to upgrade its ICT systems including data centres and networks.
In one of the deals, KPA has awarded Millenium Solutions East Africa Limited a Sh290.52 million contract to upgrade servers, storage and network infrastructure equipment at its three data centres in Nairobi and Mombasa.
The ports manager has also awarded a Sh52.2 million contract to Next Technologies Limited for provision of local area network (LAN) infrastructure support and maintenance services.
The LAN network support services will cover all active and passive equipment in Mombasa and Kenya Ferry campuses, all ICD campuses in Nairobi, Naivasha and Kisumu and liason officers in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The services will also extend to Lamu Port and Jetty, Shimoni Port, Old Port and Ras Serani.
The scheduled system upgrade come in the wake of recent complaints about delays die to intermittent downtime on its ICT-based cargo clearing systems at the ports of entries along the Northern transport corridor.
In early November, several consignments including tea, missed their shipment vessels due to hitches that affected the Integrated Custom Management System (iCMS).
“The KRA system downtime has resulted in enormous losses incurred by the tea exporters and further halting of exports will have negative ripple effects at the Mombasa Tea Auction which may further depress tea prices that have recently shown improvements since the removal of tea reserve prices by the government,” East African Tea Trade Association chairman Arthur Sawe complained after the system outage in November.
The iCMS involves submitting export or import documents into a single-window system 48 hours before a vessel arrives or departs. The taxman had for a long time cleared import cargo using separate electronic platforms before it adopted the iCMS.
The port of Mombasa is the gateway to East and Central Africa, making it one of the busiest along the East African coastlines.
The port provides direct connectivity to over 80 ports worldwide and is linked to a vast hinterland compromising Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, northern Tanzania, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia by road. A railway line also runs from the port to Uganda and Tanzania.
