Listers,

I was curious about the biometric voter registration kit and what all the fuss was about. My expectation was that this will be the state of the art stuff I have seen at exhibitions like Cartes, to my astonishment, I found that these kits include a low end Dell laptop, cheap camera, 4-4-2 finger print scanner, battery pack and it is not pretty to look at. Have we got good value for money is a big question mark? Have enhanced the local IT capability with such a project, it was procured from France…nope, it is a missed opportunity. Are we going to get 5 -10 individuals within the country who have the claim that understand the biometrics and the security requirements have the know-how to maintain these systems in country or we have still import in the expertise. We struggle to defend our ecommerce properties, how will we do with the voter lists? The procurement has been chaos, they are still going to purchase indelible ink, you have a biometric register therefore there is no need to get the toxic chemicals on the public’s fingers.

India did their EID project and the cost per registration (this has a higher security and durability needs then a voter registration) was under U$2.00 including the issue of a NFC card and labour, in our case the cost per registration, I assume 18m voters is $51 (if my maths is right) plus the administration cost, I am hoping to get my point across, we are really not benchmarking and maximising the use of the available resources, knowledge and for us to become a world class destination to deliver and export ICT products out of this country is not going to happen at this rate. We hire consultants from various big brands who and no or little experience of the a real life project except being able to put pretty presentation together, let us benchmark against the best and work out a roadmap that could enable us to deliver very good value for money.

Thanks.

Baiju Shah

Managing Partner

Telemedia Africa Ltd

Nairobi,

Kenya.

Tel. +254 701691570

Email: baiju@tele2media.com