Hello all Kenyans, I just noted with concern that the Infocom Ministry was allocated only sh783 million (about $ 9.8 USD) for the 2005/2006 budget making it amongst the lowest allocation to a ministry in Kenya..see more details here.. http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgcontententry.asp?category_id=1&newsid=51127 ...I wonder how much this goes given the plans to implement the ICT policy..... I would like to believe that other ministries that have been allocated generous amounts (education, Health, OP and so forth) have plans to use the $$ on ICT related projects and thus compensate for the low amounts to the InfoCom ministry. And just highlight some interesting facts here - at a meeting in April this year in Addis Ababa, a comparison was made on how ICT allocations featured in several African countries with the following results.. the budget for 2005 allocated to institutions (or ministries) in charge of ICTs as percentage of total budget: 0.28% in South Africa, 1.89% in Mauritius, 1.27% in Botswana, 0.07% in Ghana and 1.47% in the case of Lesotho, so if we add Kenya here we would get 0.15 as % of the national budget. So really the question here is - what amounts will go to ICT spending from other ministries or does this mean we are stuck with only 0.15% (wonder how much of this is goes to salaries and/or other admin?) for the 05/06 year..is this the amount to look forward to implement the national ICT policy? Or are we going to rely/seek donor/private sector funds to implement the national ICT policy or what avenues exist to move forward with the plan once finalised...? I would to link this to the WSIS process that has spent a considerable time talking about financing for ICT development ...and we should looks at some of the reports to pick on some of the recommendations on financing ICT for developments. Here are two relevant reports.. * A New Policy Framework for ICTD A new ICTD policy could provide the overall policy guidelines that would need to be enacted by national governments in suitable policy and legislation as well as their MDG-based poverty reduction strategy and budget. http://africa.rights.apc.org/index.shtml?apc=re_1&x=30872 Task Force on Financial Mechanisms -final report http://www.itu.int/wsis/tffm/final-report.pdf Regards, Njenga ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emmanuel Njenga Njuguna Africa Policy Monitor Project Association for Progressive Communications (APC) Email: africa.rights@apc.org or njenga@apc.org Web: http://africa.rights.apc.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~