[kictanet] Vision 2030: ICT and Other Sectors Converged (Day 2)

Wed Dec 14 20:16:07 EAT 2011

Asanteni Phares, Solomon, Harry, Kioko, Barrack and Karanja kwa kuwakilisha. Great points you all raise. I am sure the vision 2030 secretariat will benefit from this interrogation of the document and hopefully incorporate the critical issues being raised. Obviously Bwana Kibati has alot of responses to make today and we once again look forward to understanding how the secretariat is handling some of these concerns. 

Solomon, good point on where do you situate adult learners in the Vision. Lets hope your recommendations will be taken on board.

Phares, a good ICT concern: how do we spur production of GSM infrastructure and supportive policies for local software?

Harry, you are right. It is time for us to reflect as Kenyans. What lessons can we draw on turning 48 and what can we learn from the Asian Tigers?

Kioko, pls do not be afraid to engage since you might be keeping useful information for this country to yourself. You do realize you have raised concerns that the Vision 2030 must address in particular the issue of security and gangs, which can undermine its success.

Barrack, critical point on monitoring performance in the different regions will be undertaken. 

Karanaja, yes, how do we strengthen our training institutions?

Plenty of good information you have all generated. Lets keep the debate live even as we wait for Bwana Mugo's reaction to the issues raised.

Have a great evening.
Rgds
Grace

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If you have the strength to survive, you have the power to succeed. Life is all about choices we make depending upon the situation we are in. Go forth and rule the World!

From: pkariuki at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:35:42 +0300
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Vision 2030: ICT and Other Sectors Converged (Day 2)
CC: kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke
To: ggithaiga at hotmail.com

My queries are below:

When it comes to Economics, we are lagging behind. We had a projected growth rate of 10%, however the World Bank estimates that we will (on the upside) have economic growth of 5% in 2012. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/KENYAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:22600594~pagePK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:356509,00.html, not sure how the 2030 secretariat is handling this. 

On the economic pillar, I have some issues with the BPO sector. As we approach 2030, our competitiveness will depend on either a weaker currency or somehow reducing our cost of labour (China currently artificially prevents it's currency from weakening to remain competitive in exports). How do we ensure that our growth does not kill the very sector we are trying to grow? 

We also need to ingrain a culture of eating our own dogfood, growing Kenya as a market for Kenyan produce (e.g. What we have done with tea). How can we spur production of GSM Infrastructure, have policy that supports local software as opposed to imported software (use of open platforms would save this country a few billion USD every year) e.g. It may cost more to maintain an Open Source software platform (e.g. Ubuntu), but it actually is cheaper than buying MS (basically, the money is kept in our local ecosystem, creating more employment for our IT graduates who maintain the system anyway), Belgium has actually implemented the model... We also have a model being piloted in the EU, the Living Labs concept, http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_lab, which can be used for community level innovation. 

The latest report by the ICT Board estimates total ICT expenditure at 700M. If we can prevent the outflow of a lot of this spend (in open information systems that have equivalent standards) we have the double edged sword of perfecting our developer ecosystem whilst saving the country in general a fortune... 

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