[kictanet] Draft National ICT Policy Discussions Day 5 of 10: How to Develop the local ICT Industry

[Wangari Kabiru]

Blessed evening!

This weekend, CUEA has a grand opening for its Business Incubation Centre which is highly commendable and exciting.

On the other front why has this major player not had one from before? And this applies to many colleges and universities that are yet to set up Innovation Centres.

a. For something to have enmass effect, it needs to be part of the "day to day"; part of school life, workplace, shopping experience, eating time experience.
- One-off Hubs i.e what we have now have got their place; flexible, responsive, trend setting
-  Hubs to become part of the life experience; even with specialisation
- Academia and Community hubs funding from public kitties; not just reliance on donors

b. Intrapreneurship; 
- Too much experience and talent by persons working in organisations with resources is going wasted
- Incentives to Private Organisations to promote; This may be through the Membership organisations and Associations
- Back to R&D

c. Private Sector; Training & 
Development
- We have a few still great ones. While we fail here with many firms
- Most of private sector cannot stand up to be counted in HRD through training
-This is the way to keep growing the skills of the people

d. Government
- Public interest is held by the Government
- Allocate competitive funds for bids by organisations to manage incubation programmes 

e. Is there something like a National ICT Skills inventory?
- Like the way we know the number of Opticians in the country and their specialisations
- This would apply to higher order ICT skills
- While forecasting into future needs and skilling for the future needs
- So TIVETs plug in to release skills not just by number of people


Blessed evening!

Regards/Wangari

On Jun 27, 2016 22:10, Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
>
> Many thanks Ali, Wangari , Kivuva, Ahmed, Timothy and Walu for your
> timely and well thought interventions, i am just wondering how do we
> strengthen the Capacity of local Hubs providing mentorship and
> incubation such as I lab Africa, I Hub, C4D Lab , LakeHub and Swahili
> Box?, are there any policy incentives that can bolster the Capacity of
> this Institutions? Is there a way Government initiatives such as Tivet
> can be redesigned to promote growth of the local ICT industry from
> mashinani?
>
> I look forwad to your comments on the same...
>
> On 6/27/16, Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
> > A review of the ICT Start-up ecosystem is totally lacking in this policy
> > document. It is imperative that we do a deep dive of this ecosystem and
> > ensure that private and public/government efforts are aligned. Totally. It
> > is nonsensical to think that this sector will become world class without
> > private, public and government working in tandem.
> >
> > Some of the areas to look into:-
> >
> > a) Capacity building for entrepreneurs
> > b) A regulatory environment that is super conducive to the ecosystem while
> > protecting the public good.
> > c) Access to markets outside the country
> > d) Access to cheap capital.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Ali Hussein
> > Principal
> > Hussein & Associates
> > +254 0713 601113 / 0770906375
> >
> > Twitter: @AliHKassim
> > Skype: abu-jomo
> > LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
> >
> >
> > "Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what
> > no one else has thought".  ~ Albert Szent-Györgyi
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> >> On 27 Jun 2016, at 9:43 PM, Wangari Kabiru via kictanet
> >> <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Blessed Monday!
> >>
> >> Comments to today's deliberations;
> >>
> >> * eCommerce
> >> - Growth highly tied to financial services as it is about exchange of
> >> value; innovation, convenience, security
> >>
> >> * National Addressing System
> >> - Building codes as a regulation; may be caught up with new construction
> >> works with a requirement to be "digi-compliant" as part of the standard
> >> code.
> >> - Keep in mind in all Urban cities and townships of rural areas, there are
> >> sprawling informal settlements and slums - how to apply this otherwise
> >> masses are left behind.
> >> - Academia front; what courses are ongoing or to be created to support
> >> this
> >> - With the massive infrastructural developments, tie up e.g the road works
> >> with the fibre works or any other visionary works that support ICT
> >> developments so that we do not have double work done, e.g airport works,
> >> SGR railway works
> >>
> >> * Local eBusiness
> >> * BPOs
> >> * Investment incentives (Equity Shares)
> >> - For the above, a relook at why we seem to go forward and backwards would
> >> be useful. BPOs hype was there not too long ago. I would say we are lazily
> >> satisfied with a scratch of the sector.
> >> - Create a shift from consumer to mass creator
> >> - Academia would be a great partner to drive this
> >>
> >> *  ICTs in SME, (Small Medium Size Enterprises)
> >> - Firstly SME in Kenya is probably your jua kali outfit
> >> - Anything beyond that is high chances not owned locally or majority of
> >> the ownership
> >> - Taking cognisance of this, the policy must speak into the small nature
> >> of the Kenyan SME and not camouflage the needs
> >> - Back again to the need to engage closely with the Ministry of
> >> Industrialisation
> >>
> >> *ICT regional export incentives
> >> - The incentives need to be beyond the East Africa Community
> >> - i.e make the market BIG which is attractive for trade
> >>
> >> * Local Device Manufacturing
> >> - Sincerely this is the turning key for our nation in ICT
> >> - Whether Kenya is an attractive manufacturing point or not
> >> - This impacts on the import policies
> >> - Re