Through HR&A our Master Developer at Konza we met two agencies today in New York involved with the development of  a futuristic New York that will be competitive in the next 50 years.

Hudson Yards Development Corporation was created by Mayor Bloomberg to redevelop a section of New York that was their industrial area. It covers approximately 300 acres with mostly non high rise buildings. The city now wants high rises to meet future office demands.

Here they are buying back most of the land while developing modern infrastructure including the subway. Consultants are working day and night to ensure the redeveloped area meets current and future needs.

Later we visited the New York City Development Corporation charged with NY's future competitiveness.  They noted that in 1890, NY wad basically a trading centre. In the 1940s, it became an Industrial City and today it is largely a financial and services city.  They now want to switch gears to a more technology city.

Through a competitive process, they have put together a number of universities to deliberately steer NY into another Silicon Valley. Cornell University is paired with Israel Institute of Technology to deliberately create multi disciplinary programs in applied sciences and entrepreneurship. NY University too will partner with other global centres of excellence such as Indian Institute of Technology to also focus on innovation and entrepreneurship.

To help create a competitive future, the city will give free land and other incentives. They are demolishing one of the hospitals in order to create space for a futuristic project. Each of the different university grouping will focus in a specialized area that will be critical in the days to come. They are coming up with courses like health analytics, smart cities etc.

This is how in future we can use data to predict our future. This is very critical and many lessons for developing countries. As we continue to do things the same way it has always been done, things remain the same and this ain't good at all. We need to leverage on what we have and do a little more.

In the evening I attended a UN sponsored launch of Better than Cash Alliance at the Ford Foundation. Here speaker after speaker lauded Kenya for its contribution towards mobile money. Our own Michael Joseph was in attendance.  This was a launch to scale up what has been successful in Kenya (75% of mobile money transactions world wide happens in Kenya). We shall see many researchers coming to Kenya. We must move up the ladder through research and begin to lead the rest of the world.

Instead of spending many hours arguing the merits and demerits of SAP training some Kenyans we need a mobile payroll system that can be integrated with Government's Integrated Financial Management System.

When Matatus were introduced, there was a regulated transport system in Kenya. Buses could not just stop anywhere. They were like the proprietary software. Mini buses could stop anywhere and charged based on distance travelled and eventually dealt a blow to buses in urban centres. The rest today is history.

That is ok for now.


Ndemo.

Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----

From: bitange@jambo.co.ke
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2012 04:00:12
To: Alice Munyua<alice@apc.org>; kictanet<kictanet-bounces+bitange=jambo.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Reply-To: bitange@jambo.co.ke
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>

Subject: Re: Taking Care of the Future


Sent from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: Alice Munyua <alice@apc.org>
Sender: "kictanet" <kictanet-bounces+bitange=jambo.co.ke@lists.kictanet.or.ke>Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2012 20:20:09
To: <bitange@jambo.co.ke>
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions<kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Subject: [kictanet] Invitation to join dialogue on African civil society's,
 engagement with internet governance processes

(apologies for cross posting)

Dear friends and colleagues

INVITATION TO JOIN ONLINE DIALOGUE!

We invite you to join an online dialogue among African civil
society, media and other people who care about a free, open and
accessible internet to share their  views and increase their
understanding of current trends in internet  regulation and governance.

The UN's Human Rights Council adopted a landmark resolution in 2012 that
'human rights apply online as well as offline'. We need to be aware of
this and help promote the application of this decision at all levels of
internet policy and regulation.

The dialogue should help us consider questions such as:

1. What are the implications of the HRC resolution for our work?

2. How does it relate to broader debates on human rights, governance and
development?

3. What do you think are the fundamental principles that should frame
and guide the decision-making processes that shape the evolution of the
internet - at infrastructure level as well as at access and usage level?

4. What are your suggestions to improve the participation of African
constituencies in the coordination of the internet global resources as
well as in related policy-making processes?

5. What are the specific changes you would like to see, if any, across
the range of entities and processes that carry out the governance of the
  internet?

Aside from these broader questions it is also crucial that we consider
upcoming processes such as  the African Internet Governance Forum (Oct),
the global Internet Governance Forum (Nov) and the  review of the
International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) at the
ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) (Dec).

It is hoped that this platform will strengthen African civil society's
engagement with internet governance processes at national, regional and
global levels and enable us to contribute to shaping the future
development of the internet and the telecommunications networks most of
us depend on for access.

To join this discussion do one of the following:

1) Go tohttps://lists.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/africs-ig  and follow the
instructions to join the mailing list.
2) Write to Mawaki Chango atmawaki@apc.org  and he will add your email
to the list.
3) Visit our background page
http://africa-ig.wiki.apc.org/index.php/Main_Page  to learn more about
this process.

Looking forward to hearing your views and questions. Remember there is
no such thing as a 'stupid question'! Don't feel intimidated by jargon
and concepts that you don't fully understand. As a community of African
internet users we will be able to learn from one another.

Staff and members of the Association for Progressive Communications will
help facilitate this discusssion. Participants are free to post in
English and French. We will develop regular summaries and post them in
both languages.

Warm regards from the APC Africa policy team

Mawaki Chango
Emilar Vushe
Anriette Esterhuysen

--


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The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.

KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.