I tend to find all this talk of silicon savannah and gleaming tech capitals to be rather tiring and quite myopic in my opinion.
It is fine to have big dreams but at the same time this needs to be accompanied by boots on the ground doing actual work. And the work needs to be to the benefit of the majority of citizens not an amorphous grouping called the wananchi.
Its really the simple things. Clear the trash from the cities. Whatever it takes, laws, crackdowns, community cleaning saturdays whatever is necessary. Having sewage in the Nairobi river in the 21st century is rather daft. At the same time pursue transparency at all levels of government. Have the parliamentarians use the electronic voting systems in their 200,000 bob seats. That way we know who did not hesitate to add taxes to milk. Open the land registry for scrutiny by the public. Let me be able to sit at a pc in nyeri and look up my parcel of land and query its encumberances. For free.
Regulate public transport or nationalise it if thats too difficult. Matatus are not efficient.
Trying to emulate the Japanese, Israelis with zero of their discipline is like trying to learn kung fu by watching it on tv.