The Computer Society of Kenya

Since 1986

DATADAILY NATION By NGARE KARIUKI

Monday April 20, 2015

Kenya is among the most advanced countries in collecting and managing data in Africa, a global development think-tank has revealed.

Some technology and development experts have even described the country as the “Silicon Savannah” of Africa, says a report published by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

“A supportive government, the high rate of mobile phone penetration and the growth of technology innovation spaces is behind the country’s data leadership,” reads the report by the UK-based think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues.

Ndemo celebrated

Kenya, says the report, has in the past decade been at the forefront of investing in telecommunications technology, open data and encouraging innovation.

Under the leadership of the then Permanent Secretary of Information and Communication Bitange Ndemo, Kenya took giant steps in connecting the country.

“Ndemo encouraged the laying of four fibre-optic submarine cables which resulted in Kenya becoming the African country with the highest bandwidth per person, the fastest speeds and some of the lowest internet costs in Africa,” says ODI’s Elizabeth Stuart.

This, she adds, in turn lowered the barriers to entry for technology entrepreneurs and companies to develop mobile- and data-driven enterprises.

High mobile penetration and the success of Safaricom’s mobile money platform M-Pesa have made the country stand out from the rest both in the continent and beyond.

Thanks to the government’s hands-off but supportive approach in M-Pesa’s initial stages, it took off, laying the groundwork for mobile applications to be used in other sectors.

The growing use of the technology made innovation hubs such as iHub possible.

GLARING GAPS

These in turn led to the creation of a large segment of the country’s unstructured data, including Ushahidi (a crowdsourcing and crowd-mapping platform), Ma3Route (a social media-based traffic tracking platform) and mFarm (an online farming market-place).

“The establishment of this tech community, paired with a supportive government, has helped to encourage leading technology companies such as IBM, Oracle, and Google to invest in Kenya,” adds the report.

The report urges Kenya to close the glaring gaps in data needed in various development projects if the country’s economy is to improve.

The opening up of government procurement data could expose price differences and save the government approximately Sh100 billion annually, says the report

Investing in better economic data will also act as an incentive for international investors to plough their monies into the country, it says.

If Kenya invests in better-quality data, says the report, it will be cheaper to borrow internationally from agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“Data gaps mean that governments cannot plan accurately. Despite the relatively extensive nature of data in Kenya, education planning is hampered by the lack of accurate country-level profiles of schools,” says the study.

The lack of data in sectors like health and transport is hindering efforts to reform them.

In Health, for instance, most of the data on infection rates for various diseases used to be extrapolated from a small sample but this is rapidly changing as hospitals have started recording actual patient data which gives a more comprehensive picture.

Releasing government held data will also help the private sector, allowing companies to be more efficient and innovative.

It will also lower the cosy of doing business with the government.

“Good quality data yield not only has social benefits, but also real economic returns, such that, in the medium term, a data revolution could pay for itself,’ says Ms Stuart.

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