From: Agosta Liko <agostal@gmail.com>
To: charlesnduati2002@yahoo.co.uk
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Thu, 13 January, 2011 15:03:11
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Standing on the shoulders of giants
The main challenge with our ecosystem, is that there is a disjoint between the policy makers and the doers ...
The policy makers attend these big grand meetings, come up with strategy and write documents about the same. They have a better track record at getting money ...... to create the documents. They have access to the worldbank, IFC, the foundations etc etc.
The doers .... do. But they don't have as much access to money and in most cases, most policy makers don't even know them unless they scale to a certain level
To make life just a little bit
easier, the policy makers and the doers need to meet more often so that documents show whats actually on the ground. That means all these people with think tank jobs should spend more time at the ihub, skunk-works, Mobile Monday and such fora so that they get a better understanding of whats going on.
Dr Ndemo and Paul Kukubo in my view are policy makers {from Government} who are spending a fair amount of time learning about whats going on at the grassroots and they have done a good job setting up events and even funding some initiatives ... for that, I say kudos
my two cents
On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 9:20 AM, robert yawe
<robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Hi,
I believe we are missing a critical point and since the PS said "we need to be honest to one another", our so called great developers want the fame of Zuckerberg without the sweat and I request you all watch the movie Social Network to better appreciate what it took to create facebook.
To make any major breakthrough you first and foremost need the heart and enthusiasm for what you are doing and not just the vision of the expected financial gain. When Ronaldinho was horning his soccer skills on the
streets of Porto Alegre he was not thinking of the billions he will earn when he becomes a star he played for the passion of the sport.
Safaricom is not a charitable organisation and if you actual develop, not imagine, a radically industry shifting product like MPesa or facebook then not only Safaricom but the other players in the industry will beat a path to your doorstep but so long as you put the money before the product then we might as well forget about
development.
I have a live example of 2 law students who spent countless hours with no return to develop what is now the leading electronic version of the laws of Kenya. When they came to me what they needed was computers, office space and web access, they already had the passion and energy which is something that money can not buy.
For the icing on the
cake, there is another developer who currently runs the site www.live.mystocks.co.ke which is the leading stock market information portal developed the initial site www.mystocks.co.ke from the challenge from me that there where no good developers just programmers in Kenya. Well he proved me wrong without hin raising the issues of money, partnership, legal environment, government support or standing on giants shoulders. With the way this product is going any serious service provider will soon be blazing a bath to the door.
Let us live up to our peculiar ways and stop textbook approaches to a never before experienced problem, so before you stand on the shoulders of the giant make sure that are aware of your presence there cause one wrong move by the giant and all will be over.
Regards
Robert YaweKAY System Technologies Ltd Phoenix House, 6th FloorP O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200 KenyaTel: +254722511225, +254202010696
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