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ICT Africa Summit 2011 in Pretoria, South Africa

The second staging of the ICT Africa Summit will be held at the CSIR Conference Centre in Pretoria, South Africa on October 24-26.

Project Manager Rocky Kabeya says the focus will be on regional integration in ICT. He says “There has to be one platform on the continent that is strongly committed to connecting the Public and Private sectors to synchronize policy and regulatory frameworks with business opportunities sort after by the private sector and the ICT Africa Summit is the best place for that.”

The summit, which will be sponsored by MTN, Kaspersky, IBM, Meraka, CSIR and the Africa e-programme, is expected to host more ICT delegates than it did last year.

The 2010 staging of the submit in Cape Town attracted 200 delegates from 12 countries. The expected growth in delegates from across the continent will establish the submit as the Africa’s leading ICT expo.

Given the growing significance of ICTs to African economies, this submit is highly likely to become a mainstay. The ICT sector accounts for nearly five percent of Kenya’s GDP, and a growing portion of Ghana’s and Tanzania’s. Over the last decade, some African governments have shown firm political will to tackle the digital divide.

To learn more about the ICT Africa Summit 2011, please go here.

June 29, 2011/by actualize

Environment, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

e-Development in Kenya: Electrifying Villages & the Benefits of ‘Virtual Kenya’

A metal solar panel (Credit: Capital Business)

Previously, I dubbed east-Africa’s ICT hub, Kenya, the Land of the Apps, but Kenya’s wider e-development prospects and challenges are more nuanced than that. We ought to consider a range of intersecting questions.

Last week, I chronicled the Kenyan government’s plans to channel US$10 million into its much vaunted digital village project and plans to provide computers and reliable connectivity to schools across the country.

These bold policy positions are indicative of why Kenya’s success is no fluke. In fact, its concerted focus on and sensitivity to the information poverty of its legion of unconnected people, amid a rapidly transforming and pioneering telecoms sector, is a game-changer. The range of policy positions adopted recently gives credence to this view, particularly the move to rectify the country’s ailing electricity sector and the launch of ‘Virtual Kenya’ last week.

The East-African country will spend US$62 million to electrify 460 trading centers and 110 secondary schools, among other public facilities under the rural electrification program. The ICT sector will also benefit from the $730 million allocated to the Ministry of Energy for the next fiscal year. As I have noted before, this will further bridge the digital divide because none of Kenya’s—or the wider African continent’s— ambitious ICT expansion plans will be achieved without improved electricity infrastructure. According to the World Bank, 70% of Africans are not connected to a power grid.

Resolving the energy sector crisis is pivotal, as it will not only boost the expansion of the ICT sector, but also improve livelihoods. The successful ‘Songa mbele na solar‘ (Move ahead with solar) campaign of 2010 offers lessons, too. It shows that any effort to electrify Kenya’s more rustic regions will require a diversified energy mix—and given the state’s economic constraints, solar—readily accessible and easily tapped—ought to be an integral part of that mix. The ‘Songa mbele na solar” reached over nine million Kenyans, improving productivity by extending business hours, and buttressing lives through reduced air pollution.

It is clear to me that there is a growing, albeit very slow, trend towards merging the questions of sustainable development, particularly clean energy and natural resources conservation, with the ICT4D push. I am inclined to think that the link between the two ought to be further cemented. I consider the launch of ‘Virtual Kenya’, an interactive web platform for charting human environmental health, to be a step in that direction. ‘Virtual Kenya’, which was developed by the Nairobi-based web mapping technology firm Upande Ltd, in collaboration with the US-based World Resources Institute, caters to the needs of Kenya’s unconnected as it comes with “related materials for those with no access to the internet”. So, I think this is important on two fronts: first, it tackles the information divide; second, it broadens the pool of people who have ready access to environmental and health information.

It is easy to imagine the impact this will have on an educational landscape where schools and universities are constrained by outmoded data sets and other resources. Ready access to high quality, spatial data and cutting edge mapping technology on an interactive platform is golden.

For more details on ‘Virtual Kenya’, please go here.

June 27, 2011/by actualize

Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

US$10 Million for Kenyan Digital Villages and Computers in 2012

Kenya’s ICT sector accounts for three percent of GDP, and it is poised to expand next year. According to estimates for the fiscal year 2012, the government will pump millions into efforts to boost the sector. The state will spend nearly US$10 million dollars to boost exposure to ICTs in schools and far-flung villages.

Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta says the state will pump more than US$2.3 million into its much vaunted digital villages project or Pasha Centers. The Minister says the other US$7.5 million will be used to purchase computers for schools across the country. Commentators say this will provide early initiation into the digital world for a broader cross-section of Kenyan youth.

But none of these grand plans will work without major improvement of Kenya’s electricity infrastructure. “Electricity is very essential in the roll-out and running of ICT infrastructure,” says Telecommunications Engineer Esmond Shahonya. The Kenyan government agrees. The East-African ICT hub will spend US$62 million to electrify 460 trading centres and 110 secondary schools, among other public facilities under the rural electrification program. This will further bridge the digital divide.

The ICT sector will also benefit from the $730 million allocated to the Ministry of Energy.

June 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

Kenyan Telecoms Giants and Universities Collaborate to Innovate

A culture of collaboration between telecommunications giants and leading local universities make Kenya a leading player in the world of mobile innovations.

Today, three universities- Moi, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), and Nairobi University- s igned a deal with telecommunications supplier Huawei, and service provider Safaricom to “boost ICT skills among students in the east African nation”. Under the agreement, the curriculum will be refashioned to reflect industry trends. Students will be given real world exposure through a competition for Android applications development.

Huawei’s East African training center in Nairobi will be the focal point for much of the training. This puts Kenya on the cusp of honing the skills of the next generation of mobile innovators, which will accelerate the rapid pace at which it produces cutting-edge mobile apps.

Collaboration between industry and Kenyan universities is widespread. A consortium of stakeholders, including Nairobi University, joined forces to create m:lab, which is a leading force behind Kenya’s mobile application successes.

June 8, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Farmer to Farmer, Livestock, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

Kenya, the Land of the Apps churns out the iCow

Kenya is arguable the epicenter of the worldwide mobile application frenzy. The east-African nation churns out a new top-rated, demand driven application nearly every six months. The latest innovation is iCow,

iPhone screen shot of the iCow app

a voice based mobile information application for diary farmers. Green Dreams Ltd, the developer, says iCow will help farmers optimally manage livestock breeding.

The earthy app is rapidly winning over agriculturalists and tech enthusiasts. It won first place in the recently held Apps4Africa competition, a U.S funded project. The iCow has also been lauded by the Social Development Network (SODNET) and Biovision Africa Trust.

The iCow will help farmers efficaciously track a cow’s estrus cycle, manage nutrition and breeding, which will enable them to yield more milk and calves—the two indicators of a cow’s economic value. This demand-drive and culturally appropriate technology complements the ubiquitous cellphone to address key agricultural challenges. Chief among these challenges are: Poor record keeping; outmoded and hard to acquire and comprehend calendars, including the cardboard wheel system; and the gaping information vacuum.

The iCow app address these problems. It will deliver prompt farmers about their cow’s nutrition, illness and diseases, vaccinations, milk hygiene, milking technologies and techniques. This will be done via a series of voice prompts and SMS messages that will be sent to the farmer throughout the cow cycle. Critically, the voice-based nature of this application combats the problem of literacy, a major impediment to ICT4D.

The iCow is Green Dreams’ most recent plugin for the flagship app, Mkulima Farmer Information Service and Helpline (Mkulima FISH), which is being developed.

June 7, 2011/by actualize

Africa, Areas of Expertise, GBI Updates, Information and Communication Technology for Development, Integra News, USAF Updates, Where we work

INTEGRA Participates in Intel Africa USF Leaders Forum

The Intel Corporationsponsored a two-day workshop in Nairobi, Kenya aimed at facilitating dialogue among managers of African Universal Service Funds (USFs). Representatives from 10 African countries were present, as well as leaders of the Funds in Malaysia and India.

The workshop was very interactive. It consisted of a series of panel discussions facilitated by Mr. David Townsend, a world expert in Universal Service, where managers of more advanced funds could discuss how they had tackled various issues in the past. The discussion was lively and broad, and afterwards all participants acknowledged the usefulness of the exercise.

Mr. Baskir Kamara, of the Sierra Leone Universal Access Development Fund, said “I now have more confidence to implement an effective USF.”

Eric White of INTEGRA made a presentation about GBI and its mandate of providing technical assistance to USFs. Afterwards he was approached by a number of country representatives inquiring about how to establish USAID assistance programs.