[kictanet] FT Story: How Technology Changes Development Prospects

[Marie-Ann Kinyanjui]

Listers,

An encouraging story on Kenya and her ICT hopes in the latest edition of
'This is Africa' - the Financial Times supplement that focuses on our
continent... thought it may be of interest to the list.



Kenya (May 2012) FT This is Africa Online - WEF Africa 2012: How technology
changes Africa’s development prospects
http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/Reports/WEF-Africa-2012-How-technology-changes-Africa-s-development-prospects?ct=true

Realising the potential of ICTs to transform the continent, governments are
using technology to roll out public services. Africa’s tech hub, Kenya, is
a pioneer

A decade ago, there were little more than 50m mobile phones being used in
Africa. Today, you can add a zero to that figure and then some, making the
continent the world’s fastest-growing region for mobile penetration, with
more subscribers than the US or the European Union.

In certain countries, more citizens now have access to mobile phones than
to clean water, a bank account, or electricity, and for these individuals,
the cell phone means a lot more than ease of contact. Africa’s technology
revolution means access to data and to financial services. For governments,
it means a new way to overcome bottlenecks, roll out services and achieve
development targets.

“Back in 2000 the whole continent had less connectivity than Luxembourg –
Africa with almost 1bn people, and Luxembourg with less than 1m – but
that’s changed significantly,” explains Tim Kelly, lead ICT policy
specialist at the World Bank. That is due to new undersea fibre optic
cables, such as The East African Marine System, as well as better inland
connectivity, he says. “Putting that connectivity together with much wider
access to ICTs, particularly mobile phones, you’ve got the makings of a
success story.”

Used as an outlet for political frustration, mobile phones, internet and
social networking can help topple governments – for proof, look to the Arab
Spring. They have the power to make administrations more democratic,
transparent and accountable. They offer citizens real-time political
participation and the chance to expose corruption. Yet the real potential
of these technologies is not in sweeping democratic reforms, but in “the
less glamorous side of democracy”, Mr Kelly argues: issues such as “fixing
your water pump”.

Aware of all this, many municipalities are taking advantage of the rise of
ICTs to improve the lives of their citizens and overhaul the way in which
populations and businesses can interact with public sector representatives.
In Kenya, a trailblazer in the sector, the government’s development
blueprint – the Kenya Vision 2030 – draws heavily on science, technology
and innovation as foundations for growth.

“There has been a lot of progress in building the infrastructure,
developing local content and local applications. Kenya’s IT infrastructure
is actually better than most developed countries, and the diffusion of IT
in Kenya has been very high,” says an enthusiastic Bitange Ndemo, permanent
secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communications, citing the
now universally-touted example of Vodacom’s mobile money platform M-Pesa.

It is now time for the public sector to play catch-up, he says: “We have
been able to develop applications that have put Kenya on the world map in
terms of software development… Now, we want to get to a point where we can
use the mobile platform for the interface between the citizens and
government – so they can deal with the government without necessarily
having to travel to government sites.”

This requires further progress in basic ICT infrastructure, though, and the
fast transfer of government data to online platforms. Under the country’s
Open Data Initiative – launched last year – the government has been working
with World Bank support to upload almost all existing government
registries. Data on everything from national censuses and exam results, to
government expenditure and public service locations – and everything in
between – is being digitised.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in areas like the judiciary and land
registry, and we are now digitising health records – starting with Kenyatta
National Hospital and moving onto the district level,” Mr Ndemo explains.

Those records mean big savings in terms of efficiency, but have broader
implications: “To be able to provide records over periods of years – this
is what we never used to have in Africa, but we are changing that,” he
says. Records will provide crucial insights into health trends and support
local research.

From next year, the government will roll out its focus to e-procurement
services, which could save it an annual $1bn. Add that to the estimated
$2bn in potential savings by putting judicial records online, and an
additional $5bn from efficiency gains within agriculture, he says, and the
gains become clear.

“We thought about using technology to focus on business process outsourcing
for countries like Britain and the US – like India did,” Mr Ndemo says.
“But India looked more to the outside world and has not utilised IT to
improve livelihoods. There is nowhere we could get up to $10bn from and be
able to bring that back to the economy. Better for us to use IT to look at
our internal inefficiencies, and net the savings to improve the livelihoods
of your citizens.”

When it comes to evolving strategies for e-government, Kenya is by no means
alone. Countries from Mauritius to Sierra Leone and Uganda have had success
in implementing so-called integrated financial management information
systems which let governments manage their budgets and report revenues. In
2010, the continent’s economic powerhouse, South Africa, declared the ICT
sector a top priority. While progress in the field has been uneven, donors
hold up the country’s electronic tax filing systems – managed by South
African Revenue Services – as a world class model.

For governments, providing these services means better collaboration, both
between ministries and with the private sector. “Smart City” initiatives
are being rolled out in cities such as Cape Town, and here too Kenya’s
government has embarked on a project – this time in partnership with IBM,
which is hoping to provide solutions for energy, security and, above all,
traffic issues in Nairobi.

The group hopes to use cell phones, for instance, to pinpoint traffic build
ups in the notoriously congested capital city. By collecting this data,
“you can start to predict and make analyses of alternative routes, and
provide that information either to the city planners, or to the traffic
police, or to emergency vehicles,” explains Anthony Mwai, country general
manager, IBM East Africa.

Across the continent, governments are working with businesses to roll out
services that can help overcome constraints such as low agricultural
productivity, and the dearth of doctors and educated teachers. “What we
need now is to deepen the services we provide and innovate in other areas:
health, agriculture, e-learning – we want to leverage on IT across every
sector,” Mr Ndemo says.

In Kenya, where there are only around 1.5 health workers per 1000 of a 40
million population, many rural clinics do not have internet access or even
electricity – creating problems for the delivery of test results to
patients. Here, the traditional approach involved taking blood samples at
rural clinics, which were sent on to five national health laboratories,
with the results posted back.

“It could take days, weeks, months, sometimes they didn’t even show up,”
says Paul Ellingstad, director for global health at Hewlett Packard. “That
created all sorts of problems. If you don’t have the results, the mother
and father lose faith in the system, they don’t bring the child back. The
child, because they are not diagnosed, isn’t started on antiretroviral
treatment, and there is a 50 percent chance they will die by their second
birthday.”

Hewlett Packard recently partnered with the Clinton Health Access
Initiative and Kenya’s Ministry of Health to develop SMS-enabled printers.
“Instead of having to go through the post, you are texting back and
printing out results at the rural health centre. So you have
predictability, as well as compressing down into a matter of hours, or at
most a day, the time taken to get results from the national lab to
virtually any clinic around the country,” Mr Ellingstad explains.

Mobile incubation hubs are popping up across Africa, bringing together
mobile tech entrepreneurs and innovators. Of two supported by the World
Bank, one is in South Africa, the other Kenya. Out of Nairobi’s not yet
year old m:lab have sprung groups such as Shimba Technologies – a startup
which recently released MEDAfrica, a smartphone app which wants to bypass
the country’s shortfall of doctors by providing symptom checkers and
medical advice. When users have identified their ailments, the app can then
point them to certified specialists –thereby avoiding fraudsters.

And true to ambitions, similar developments are springing up across
sectors. Agriculture is an area of focus: “Previously we never measured
productivity, over-utilisation of the land or productivity drops,” Mr Ndemo
says. That is being changed by applications such as M-Farm, a service the
World Bank’s Mr Kelly describes as “a kind of Groupon for farmers”, which
allows Kenyan farmers to receive information about market prices, and
aggregate to purchase inputs at wholesale value, and find buyers – all via
text message. The setup bypasses productivity curbs, such as costly inputs
or the middlemen who offer farmers below-market prices for their produce.
It is also a monitor for productivity levels.

Across borders, the meeting point between these technologies could spell
the onset of new and sustained development across the continent. Problems
remain, not least resistance to change amongst less educated citizens – an
issue which Mr Ndemo counts as Kenya’s “biggest dilemma”. But mobile
technologies and growing connectivity mean a unique opportunity to leapfrog
growth constraints. For Africa, the mobile is both a product and a driver
of a stronger, wealthier, more engaged society.






Kind Regards,

Marie-Anne (Kui) Kinyanjui
External Relations Specialist, IBM Growth Markets Unit
Geographic Expansion/General Business