Kenya ICT Board

Media Workshop
23rd April 2010

Status Update
Lucy Gachui Odhiambo,
Communication Manager
Kenya Information and Communication Technology Board
lodhiambo@ict.go.ke
www.ict.go.ke

The Kenya ICT Board

Kenya ICT Board
Our Vision
• Kenya becomes a top ten global ICT hub

Our Mission
• To rapidly and innovatively transform Kenya
through the promotion of ICT for socio-
economic enrichment of our society
 Business Process Outsourcing in the Vision 2030

Economic pillar
To maintain a sustained average economic growth rate of 10% per year
over the next 25 years

5. Business Process
3. Wholesale Offshoring
1. Tourism 2. Agriculture & retail 4. Manufacturing 6. Financial services

Visions Be a t top 10 long- Innovative, Move towards Improve Quickly become Efficient and globally
haul tourist commercially greater efficiency competitiveness to one of the top 3 competitive driving
destination oriented and and at least a 30% revolutionise BPO destinations high savings and
modern formal market sector in Africa financing
share* investments

Goals for • Increase beds • Raise yields of • Create 10 hubs • Create at least 2 • Create 7,500 • Raise savings
2012 from ¬40,000 to key crops by ~3x and 1000-1500 SECs with at direct BPO jobs, and investment
¬65,000 • Better utilisation PBGs least 10 large 5000 of which to ~25-30% of
• Increase visitors of up to 1M ha • 10 Tier 1 retail international are in BPO park GDP
from 1.8 M to 3 • 600K-1M new markets players as well
M hectares made • Add 3 new as at least 5 SME
arable retailers with parks
national reach

Public sector reform

Transversal
reforms and key Infrastructure development
enablers People development
JOH-KYA002-20070802-RN-X1
3 Land reform

Source: Vision 2030

BPO/ ITES ( Business Process
outsourcing and IT Enabled Services)
Software developer certification program
• The proposed approach is therefore to develop and roll-
out an internationally benchmarked software developer
certification program that tests the ability of software
developers

The Kenya ICT Board

Centre of Excellence
• The board is setting up an umbrella institution for
industry collaboration on BPO talent development
and skills excellence.
• For co-development of the COE, companies may
choose to participate individually or as a
consortium to leverage differing strengths (e.g.
training companies may partner with leading global
BPO providers).
• Participating companies will contribute by
undertaking the following activities (i) Training of
Trainers, (ii) Content, (iii) Certification.
• A business plan is being developed and a
framework to guide the running of the COE is also
expected in May.
Digital Villages ( Pasha)
With under 5% of Kenyans connected to the internet
this project aims to set up centers countrywide to
get all Kenyans connected to the internet and
accessing services from the government and private
sector online
Status:
• After successfully training over 1,100 entrepreneurs
, phase two of the PASHA training is currently under
development.
• The training will now take an e-learning format ,
ensuring wider reach at a fraction of the cost.
Local Digital Content
• This project aims at generating public enthusiasm for
creating, protecting, using, sharing and preserving
content through digital technologies.  This is in
recognition that Kenya’s digital future means finding
these digital opportunities in our society today
Status:
• Currently, the board is refining the implementation
guidelines, assist in hiring the financial institution
that will disburse the digital village funds and
operationalize the technical support and bandwidth
assistance.

The Kenya ICT Board

Kenya ICT Board Programs
• Wezesha: As part of the Wezesha laptop
campaign, the board will distribute laptops to
students worth USD 2M. The project aims to
provide an incentive that will enable access to
laptops by university students.
Local Digital Content
• Two approaches for developing local digital content
1. Tandaa Symposium
• bi-monthly event sponsored by Google
• explores various aspect of local content including:
intellectual property and piracy, culture, music,
security and storage, cloud computing
• Next Tandaa is on film and animation on May 6
•

The Kenya ICT Board

Local Digital Content Grant
• World Bank funded grants to promote development of content
including applications and software development
• two categories:
• Government content and applications: content and application
to support government services through the information.go.ke
portal ($2.5 million)
• Private Sector: innovative content and applications from the
private sector ($1.5million)
• For more information and to stay up to date:
become a fan on facebook.com/tandaaKenya
Follow us on twitter @tandaaKenya

The Kenya ICT Board

 E-Government
• Shared Services Project
• This project aims to get government services available
online and thereby increase efficiency and reduce cost
to the citizen in the long term
• Connected Government;
• The Connected Government Summit is the brainchild of the board
in consultation with industry players and key government
decision makers aimed at establishing a platform for
collaboration, capacity building and priority sharing between the
government and the IT sector with a view of linking and
hastening implementation of government IT projects to world
class standards.
• Next Connected Gov April 2011
The Kenya ICT Board
Coming up
• Tandaa Symposium May 6, 2010
• Media Workshop – July 2010
• Media Workshop October 2010
• MNC breakfasts: Monthly
• BPO/ ITES marketing Kenya: Bellagio, Italy Sept
2010

The Kenya ICT Board

Thank you

The Kenya ICT Board