While we look forward to a comprehensive response on the High Tech Sector/ Malili as soon as you have some time, I believe that you mentioned that completion is about 3 years away. That seems is not a lot of time to get e.g at least 50 companies who have significant turnovers coming close to about Kshs 500 million with a % on exports. I think there may be a need for a review. I already read that IBM super-team is in the country and done some indepth research and assessment into e-Govt, it maybe a good time to ask them to re-access the current trends. Mobile, Web and Social technologiy development platforms trends may only produce slim domestic interest with extremely small turnovers and virtually impossible that either can later contribute to significant economic growth.

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 10:54 AM, aki <aki275@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Dr Ndemo, and will await to read the comprehensive response. :-)

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 9:45 AM, <bitange@jambo.co.ke> wrote:

Aki,
Whereas by chance one of the aaplications developed here may become a global brand, we do not want to leave to chance. That is why we are developing centers of excellency, standards and incubators to make sure we part of global standards. There is much learning that we must go through. The reason we should seek to collaborate while guarding our inventions.

As I write, we are working on a digital economy policy. We shall come up with a specific legislation in this emerging sector. Create special incentives that would propel it to greater levels.

We also must deal with Universities inorder to create the triple helix that has worked in many parts of the world. Strathmore is leading in the right direction. We want to fully their patnership with Sumsang and Safaricom. Through such arrangement we create capacities that lead to new other enterprises.

This is an area I have the greatest interest and would want to explore. I am using the annoying Blackberry so please allow me to respond more comprehensively when I get to a real keyboard.

Ndemo.

Sent from my BlackBerry®

From: aki <aki275@gmail.com>

Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 09:13:11 +0300

To: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

Cc: <bitange@jambo.co.ke>

Subject: Re: [kictanet] Bitange for President? Driving Knowledge Economy?OnlineInterview with PS Ndemo

Dr Ndemo,

I have a final question on regarding the creation of the High Tech Sector in preparation for Malili. While cheaper rent or infrastructure facilities maybe an additional advantage, I think we are still to find a way to push private sector and govt incentives/policies on creating the High Tech Sector. I believe we are no where at the moment, neither the mobile or web development sectors even come close to becoming the next billion shilling industry sectors. These two sectors are in a transition mode where the demand is for more localised settings.

What will the govt do to ensure that kenyan companies start looking at holding patents and developing the needs of external markets based on technology trends. I think the last thing we would want to see is a scenario where kenyans in ICT become more of daily wage labourers on contract basis. While this may seem an ideal employment creation scenario, the results will be negative in the long term.

What steps and incentives will create the High Tech Sector companies and will opening up the development of critical govt sectors offer an incentive to create broad based technologies?

Thank you.

Rgds.