Where is Africa’s ICT hub? Is it South Africa, Nigeria or Nairobi, the capital of Kenya? By growth, it would have to be Nairobi, with my county’s ICT sector expected to grow by 15 per cent this year, compared to around 6 per cent for the economy as a whole.
Kenya and Nairobi – dubbed the “Silicon Savannah” – has boomed in recent years through international partnerships and home-grown products, the most famous being M-PESA the mobile money transfer service that has revolutionised financial transactions for hundreds of millions across the world. Innovation spaces such as iHub have helped spur growth for young tech entrepreneurs offering opportunities for co-working and incubation. Other products such as M-Farm, an app providing an online marketplace and real-time prices for agricultural buyers and sellers and iCow, an SMS-based service for farming information – just to name a few – have seen Nairobians’ technology spread far beyond city borders.
Only this month, in a real boost for Nairobi, IBM opened a new big data research centre in our city, underlining our new front-runner status. This body will assist in analysing big data, support the decongestion of traffic and improve accessibility and speeds for accessing information and services.
So why has Nairobi been growing so fast? There have been many reasons for this growth spurt: Nairobi’s location and time zone; our language, English; the high standard of education particularly at university level; our long-standing friendship and partnerships with western countries; and preferential taxation and regulation that have encouraged competition. Even our 2013 national and regional polls were a showcase – not for instability that is too often the byword for elections in Africa – but for the use of technology across many of the winning campaigns, using social media and other platforms to reach out to the 75 per cent of Kenyans who are under 25. Many of the international media that covered the election dubbed it Africa’s first truly digital contest.
My city wide Government is also playing its part to boost the growth of this sector. We are transforming the way citizens can interact with regional government services by introducing a new electronic public tendering process that is open and easily available for all to see and follow and will underpin the transparency of tenders. The digitization of applications and payments – implemented under my Governorship – has already streamlined operations and increased parking and payment rates in while raising collections for City Hall.
We will go further than this in coming months and years, as well as focus on the longer-term needs of Nairobi that, were they to go unsolved, eventually hold our city back. These start with modernizing infrastructure. Under my governorship we are repairing and augmenting the drainage network, the road network and junctions to improve Nairobi’s notoriously congested traffic. We are investing in schools by opening new classrooms, dining rooms and ensuring by the end of my first term in office all state schools have a reliable and constant electricity supply – connected to the national grid. This will bring the opportunities for e-learning and ICT classes directly to all primary as well as secondary students in Nairobi, a first for Africa.
We are also beginning to construct public housing, for rent and sale,to cater for the 100,000 new Nairobians we welcome every year to our city from across Kenya and further afield, as well as unveil plans to build a rapid transit system with Japanese engineers.
All of this is underpinned by a Masterplan for urban development, the first such plan Nairobi has had since 1949.
Ultimately, however, none of this work can be completed unless it is paid for. While the digitization of citywide collections and increased grants from central government will help, we will need far greater investment to grow at the pace we need. This can and must come in part from the ICT sector, and I encourage anyone seeking to develop products and services using world-class professionals at highly competitive rates to look no further than Nairobi.
Africa’s burgeoning middle class, requiring not just the best products from the west and east but offerings they can see as truly African are waiting for your business. We can see from the development of the sector to-date that there is a market for homemade products as much as there is for the latest western social media app or smartphone.
My office is always open to entrepreneurs and investors and we will be delighted to help you find partners and colleagues to grow your business in the centre of what is now the world’s fastest growing hub for ICT.
