Building on technology achievements
Government officials say no one should be surprised at the idea of an advanced technology city carved out of the east African plains. Kenyans have pioneered a number of tech-based initiatives, many launched at the
iHub, a 16-thousand member innovation technology lab run by young Kenyan entrepreneurs. It offers collaborative workspace, networking events and incubation support to Kenya's vibrant hacker and business development community. On the ground floor of the building housing iHub is
m-Farm, a software and agribusiness company that introduced an application allowing Kenyan farmers to find out market prices in cities across the country through texting. It enables producers to avoid selling too low and help find buyers at the most favorable rates.
And then there's
Ushahidi, a crowd-sourced application originally developed to monitor post-election violence after Kenya's troubled 2007 elections. It's open-source collaborative model has been adopted for uses ranging from helping survivors of the 2010 Haiti earthquake to find missing family members, communicating critical safety information during eastern U.S. storms in 2010, and warning motorists how to avoid flooded roads after floods in Brisbane, Australia.
This year, in a partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation's
100 Resilient Cities project, Ushahidi launched the
Resilience Network Initiative. Already work has begun with civil society groups in Boulder, Colorado in the United States.
Perhaps most representative of Kenyans willingness to embrace technology is
M-pesa, a mobile money system. Kenya was an early adopter of the mobile wallet idea, with transactions using the M-Pesa system – 'pesa' being the Swahili word for money, now accounting for some 43 per cent of GDP. Two-thirds of Kenya's adult population, including the rural poor with no bank accounts, use it regularly to transfer cash to each other and to make payments – whether on smart phones in fancy restaurants or on simple mobile phones to pay for motorbike transport.
KODTA CEO, Dr. Catherine Adeya, hopes that potential investors in Konza will be as adept at using their mobile devices as Kenyans are. In June she presented a digital map of the new city's area that she said will make it easy for to select plots for development. 'We have decided to employ the latest technology for this world class project," she said. "Our investors will be able to monitor available parcels of land available for development from anywhere in the world just by using their mobile phones."
A 'moral obligation'
Initial infrastructure development for Konza is in the early stages, but a growing number of Kenyans seem convinced, along with Muoki, that soon the dry stretch of grassland will be towering with skyscrapers.
In downtown Nairobi, at the Kenyatta International Conference Center (KICC), a recent event showcased creative, technology-fueled projects and ideas that can be further developed and deployed in the tech city. University students from around east Africa gathered here for the third National Science Technology and Innovation week organized by the government of Kenya.
Within the halls of one of the conference rooms, one exhibit kept both students and judges enthralled. The object of their interest kept moving from one end of the arena to the other, with the occasional stunt inviting cheers.
"We are here today for this year's robot competition," beamed Evans Gachiri, an engineering student from Dedan Kimathi University. "The robotic invention is expected to demonstrate how it can feed livestock by itself."
The 24-year-old said his project is funded by the government through the university, but that is only at the basic level. He worries that he may complete his studies without taking his skills in robotics to the next level. However, the prospect of working in a technopolis city in his home country seemed to persuade the fifth-year student that he will find opportunities to pursue his project.
"I would like to think of a future where everything will be done by machines like robots," said Gachiri. "I hope that Konza city will [promote] automation as the country prepares for a new technology age."
An enterprise like the technopolis cannot just function as an investment, according to the
National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation (NACOSTI). As a government agency charged with spotting and nurturing innovation in the country, its officials argue that grand projects like Konza will succeed only by spotting and nurturing innovators like Gachiri.
Njeri Wamae, the chairperson at NACOSTI says Konza is the next generation's meal ticket but that developing countries, including Kenya, are still struggling with the problem of demystifying science, technology and innovation.
"The future lies in reaching out to Kenyans and ensuring that they internalize science, technology and the need to invent new things," says Wamae. "It is our moral obligation to make sure that we lift people out of extreme poverty."
*Source
AllAfrica
