[kictanet] Craft Silicon to Relocate

[Kivuva]

Thank you Robert for bringing this up. It's good to see Dr. Ndemo is
petitioning the government to give local players a better deal.

You have a good point Washington. How many local software development
firms exceed the $1M mark? That would be a good basis to gauge our
ingenuity.

Regards

On 21/08/2012, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 10:03 PM, robert yawe
> <robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk>wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Yet another nail in the Konza coffin with the imminent departure of Craft
>> Silicon to Singapore as a result of the finance bill which gave tax
>> incentives to imported software and no corresponding incentives for local
>> developers.
>>
>>
>> http://www.nation.co.ke/Tech/ICT+firms+shun+Kenya/-/1017288/1483212/-/1sy894/-/index.html
>>
>>
>> At this rate Nokia will relocate Virtual City to Denmark or Singapore if
>> we continue to allow our laws to favour foreign firms at the expense of
>> developing local capacity.  This development pours cold water on the
>> recent
>> establishment of a research lab by IBM as those who acquire the skills
>> will
>> not be able to be competitive locally.
>>
>> More disappointing is a statement by Huawei Kenya representative, Wind
>> Li,
>> that such incentives to foreign software developers will challenge locals
>> to be more creative yet we all know that China shutdown it borders to
>> foreign participation for over 50 years which resulted in their current
>> positive growth.
>>
>> He added insult to injury by saying that removal of trade barriers is
>> always good for a country's business development, this statement sounds a
>> lot like what the western governments kept preaching to us during the
>> height of the structural adjustment program.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> PS.  China is now making it clear that they are here as the 3rd wave
>> of colonizers of Africa.
>>
>> Robert Yawe
>>
>>
> Two things stand out from my shallow reasoning on this, based on the fact
> that I do not have the figures/reasons to support myself:
>
> 1. Minister Githae is not being advised properly. I should blame the ICT
> Board (Paul Kukubo) for this, unless he says his organization's mandate
> does not include promoting local developers.
> 2. There may be just a handful software development houses in KE, a number
> which is seen as insignificant.
>
> I don't see why same tax incentives were not extended to local software
> developers. Maybe M$ pushed for this and arm-twisted the govt?? Decisions
> aren't made in a vacuum, so there must be a hand to blame for this
> misnomer.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
> Nairobi,KE
> +254733744121/+254722743223
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
> I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.
>


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