Hi, Thank you for acknowledging that my faulty geography is as a result of the education system. As a nation we have proven that we are basically traders and do not have the right culture to handle manufacturing, you yourself have raised the issue that even after taking many groups to see the digital tv set top box at the university no one has taken up the challenge to mass produce the device. If you had the device ready there would be no shortage of resellers. You have mentioned that we have iron ore but when do we expect to be able to extract and processor it to the level that we can produce more than rails for RVR? Even after 47 years of independence we still export most of our tea and coffee unable to add value. The reality is that technology is the stop gap measure to provide us with the cash resources to invest in heavy industry, there is no need to try and replicate the Hyundai and Samsung and Wipro models. Technology is based suited for us as we can set-up software development houses across the country whether there are roads or not. I like your potato example but note that even today as we speak raw potatoes shall be delivered to Wakulima Market for delivery to the various chips shops tomorrow morning where an army of peeler's will send hours on them just to deposit the peels to the over full dump site in Dandora. Yet if we had the potatoes peeled in Njambini the peels would have been reapplied to the soil to improve the fertility, its not a major industry but we have been unable to deal with the processing of a potato so how do we expect to be able to manufacture a precision device? Now back to the objective of this thread, can you please see how to get an allocation of the funds ear marked for jua kali sheds to be utilised to set-up a hosting centre where our ICT graduates can host their applications at a reasonable cost. So that hopefully we can set up our own local social media sites like the Brazillians and Chinese and stop over crowding facebook and the elk while at the same time keep as much as our internet traffic local which should leave sufficient international bandwidth to have the Okampo 6 interviewed via tele-presence. I hope I have brought us back to the issue at hand, it takes less time an money to develop a hosting centre than it would take to build 1 kilometre of tarmac road and will benefit far more people. Regards Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696 ________________________________ From: "bitange@jambo.co.ke" <bitange@jambo.co.ke> To: robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> Cc: bitange@jambo.co.ke; Kictanet Mail list <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Thu, 31 March, 2011 16:23:21 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Local hosting - reiterated Robert, I am disaapointed with you in the sense that you took the English Geography we leant in schools very seriously. We we tought that Kenya did not have any minerals. Indeed we have lots of iron ore in the coastal regions and Ukambani. I need not tell you that Coal runs from Kitui to Makueni. Gold is also found in Transmara, Migori and Kisii. I want also to remind you that Japan has no mineral resources to produce PCB Boards. The population trends favours us in terms of competitive advantage in manufacturing. In the west, age profile cannot subject them to manufacture such low end manufacturing. The one child policy is begging to hurt China. India is looking to take up the opportunity but Africa must take basic sciences more seriously in order to get into the manufacturing realm. As we build the technological infrastructure, we must understand the world dynamics and how we can take advantage of the situation. If politicians are looking at the youth as a problem and learned people like you thinking we are not competitive then where do we go? We spent Ksh. 18 billion importing dried tomatoes from spain as we dumped 50% of our produce. We imported Ksh.5 billion of dried meat from Australia as we lost our livestock in Norther Kenya. We imported Ksh. 7 billion worth of juices from Brazil and SA when 90% of our Mangoes in Tana and Guavas in Vihiga went to waste. We import dried potatoes when 60% of the produce in Nyahururu and Molo goes to waste. Some of the relief food in Northern Kenya are potatoe flour from the US. Does all these really need technology infrastructre? Are we worried that we shall not be competitive in this? Ndemo.
Hi,
Lets keep this response as a final digression from the main issue, we do no have iron ore neither aluminium therefore we shall need to import the basic raw material for making cabinets we would rather concentrate on developing microchips and have them fabricated else where.
The Chinese produce millions of units a year which allows them to enjoy economies of scale, therefore before we can achieve such production capacity the casing business will have been overtaken.
So we need to concentrate on the intellectual element of technology and leave the hardware business to those already entrenched.
Now can we please revert back to the issue at hand, how can we provide cost effective hosting for the myriad of developers out here?
Regards Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
________________________________ From: Collins Areba <arebacollins@gmail.com> To: robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> Sent: Thu, 31 March, 2011 10:25:31 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Local hosting - reiterated
There is no way we can deliver a casing in nairobi for less than the Chinese fellow. interesting conclusion... why not?
@robert, let me prepare an appropriate response for this... but i believe you are grossly in error on this. Other sectors could actually be more pivotal than IT. Food for instance, imagine if we were the best brains yet could not produce food, Inflation would hit the roof and our intellectual products would amount to null.
On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 10:18 AM, robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Hi Collins,
As much as you disagree with me you need to appreciate that with cloud computing and smart phones we would be moving backwards if we tried to go into casing manufacture and PCB boards as the incumbents have got the process done to a science. There is no way we can deliver a casing in nairobi for less than the Chinese fellow.
My issue is that we have graduates out there who cannot get to their full potential because of a lack of a technological infrastructure. What I am requesting the government it to think out of the box, we are better placed to provide the world with intellectual products and should work in that direction.
On the issue of power to me it it neither her nor there we have a sank cost in as far as the generating capacity is concerned so unless we can immediately get a cheaper source that will enable us to continue meeting the loan repayments for the existing capacity and still offer a lower cost to the consumer then we can turn off the dams and geothermal stations but until then we need to live with what we have.
Still on the issue of cost of power can you give me an example of a manufacturing company that actually closed shop as a result of this?
Cost of production, biggest component. looking up the list of companies that actually relocated to Misri and even Ethiopia...
I do not understand the production of sufurias or jikos but I do understand technology and from where I am sitting unless we develop the technology infrastructure we shall never even come close to meeting the vision 2030 objectives.
Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
________________________________
From: Collins Areba <arebacollins@gmail.com> To: robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> Sent: Wed, 30 March, 2011 8:40:26
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Local hosting - reiterated
@robert, with all respect, you seem to look at every other industry as inferior compared to information technology. I beg to differ:
Here are my reasons:
The Industry is reliant on electronic gadgets imported from China and south Korea, these components will increasingly become a significant expenditure not only by Kenya but also by the other nations in the region.
Thanks to technology, CNC (Computer numerical control machining) and CAD / CAM, the technology gap between Kenya and China is easily narrowed. This means that technically if we wanted to start manufacturing PCBs, all we would need are the equipment, standard layout designs and raw materials. Then we can innovate and improve on existing ones.
This would fly in the face of your thinkin but actually, after roads GOK should be looking at Energy. (If you ask me it should have looked at energy first). Why Kenyan electricity is 5 times more expensive than china's is a matter for another discussion but Kenya should aspire to have the cheapest electricity in the continent. (Green or not green notwithstanding, cheap first, then maybe green).
On the Jua kali sheds, what GOK needs is to have extension officers to now work on getting those boyt and girls hammering 220L barrels into pans and jikos into better fabrication technologies to improve productivity. I believe that granted, these willbe the centers that will start manufacturing components. a shed in Nairobi could be doing computer cases, another in coast could be doing monitors, another could be doing power supplies...e..t.c.
On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:54 AM, robert yawe <robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
This says a lot about the governments lip service on vision 2030, the setting up of special economic zones and jua kali sheds is so industrial revolution thinking.
With technology the entire country becomes an special economic zone whose only infrastructure requirements are data centres and high speed broadband (wired or otherwise) all of which are much cheaper to install than 4 lane highways and 11,000 kilo volt power sub-stations, or could it be the issue of 10%.
Kazi kwa vijani needs to look beyond the standard 8 drop out to the university graduate who already has the skills and is only looking for an enabling environment.
Dr. Ndemo, I propose you call your counterpart in the Ministry of Industrialisation and which ever other ministry is involved in the jua kali shed project and insist to be given 1 shed in every constituency then take the cash equivalent and set-up a hosting and collocation centre.
All it requires is 1000 square feet of space in your offices (digitise your files and move the physical ones to Kabartonjo). From your offices get at least a 1 gigabit link to KIXP and as you are next to Oranges Telephone House which sits on a node of the Secom marine cable you can tap in for the international bandwidth.
The other link you require is to KeNET (http://www.kenet.or.ke), the education network hub, which I believe is currently asleep so that the location can be accessed across all universities. This is critical as we know what happened when the developers of google and facebook went through when trying to host within their campuses.
If you leave the issue of hosting and collocation to market forces and private enterprise then our young developers and doomed to languish in poverty like our great artists. This is the 1968 of technology time to setup an ICDC and KNTC type entities for the technology industry which you can then float like safaricom and kenya power after the market has matured.
From where I sit not even Safaricom or Airtel have the resources or willpower to salvage this situation. Robert Yawe KAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th Floor P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 Kenya
Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
From: Dennis Kioko <dmbuvi@gmail.com>
To: robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Sent: Tue, 29 March, 2011 17:57:58 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Local hosting - reiterated
Developers and Local Hosting providers have for long been involved in the "chicken before the egg" situation where hosting firms say that demand has to increase for prices to come down, they have to justify investment. Developers meanwhile want prices to come down before they host locally, with some of them barely having budgets.
At the same time, local hosting firms have to learn to offer world class cutting edge platforms and interfaces to their users if they are going to adopt them.
At the same time, it aids when those providing this services go into technical details, like the type of databases offered, supported scripting languages rather than just tell us 2 databases, developers need that information.
Rememeber there is tough competition from the likes of Amazon who have a robust cloud infrastructure which is free for low usage (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/)
As a case study, a local developer has done a popular application , AroundMe (Nokia Ovi store - http://store.ovi.com/content/103911#/content/103911/reviews) which has been downloaded more than 10,000 times and with 30,000 searches. The app uses the Google App Engine (https://appengine.google.com/) cloud platform, also free to a certain usage . To now the app is still operating on the free limit (http://aroundmenow.appspot.com/).
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“The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy”
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