Ali,

Our biggest problem is that we start our projects backwards.... The cart before the horse mantra!

When we travel and we see a solid city and/or area such as Shenzen, Silicon Valley et.al, we quickly come back and want to build a similar city *without* first asking the hard questions; such as what *actually led* to the rise of those cities and regions? We just want to build new cities!

I once heard from a 'higher up' that once we build the walls & buildings at Konza and firms relocate there, we will see collaboration and explosion of Kenya inventions as we haven't seen before! I asked them to get a map of Nairobi and put a compass at the center, draw a 30KM radius and just about most higher education institutions & tech firms would be there and yet we don't see that 'explosion'.

And I highly doubt we'd see it by moving to a veritable desert.

IMO, disband Konza Technolopolis / Parastatal, it's currently eating Billions that could have much better use in our tech ecosystem etc . Give Konza land to some campus(es), give them 30-50 years (Yes, that much time) to build up and attract solid talent. Once we have that ecosystem, use reserved areas around it for expansion into tech hubs...

In the meantime, concentrate on building tech hubs & tech ecosystems & GoK funded investments around Nairobi, that's where the current ecosystem currently is...

Regards

On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 7:35 AM Ali Hussein via KICTANet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

GG

Thanks for sharing.

Listers, even the best-laid plans can miss their targets. I'd rather we discuss:-

1. What went wrong.
2. What are the lessons to be learned.
3. Can the project get back on track?
4. Has it gone wrong? How long does it take to build a new city?

Regards

Ali Hussein
Digital Transformation

Tel: +254 713 601113
Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo
LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.

On Tue, Jun 1, 2021 at 7:32 PM Grace Githaiga via KICTANet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers
This may be of interest to some here.
Rgds
Grace

Kenya was one of the earliest countries to outsource its dreaming to McKinsey. The entire Vision 2030 strategy was developed by the Kenyan government in conjunction with McKinsey & Company, with Konza being one of many techno-utopian urban renewal projects the firm was involved in. At first, most were undertaken in Asia, then, in the 2000s, the focus shifted to African countries, which were seen as growth markets for big tech and financial corporations.

...the McKinseyfication of government and federal services often means that the mere production of paperwork counts as progress. ...The question then becomes, Who is responsible for the failure of Konza?”

Read on: https://restofworld.org/2021/the-failed-promise-of-kenyas-smart-city/
--

Grace Githaiga
KICTANet Convenor

KICTANet portals
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