IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The major development is expected to boost the country's economic growth.

A huge multi-billion-pound technology city is being developed in one of Africa's most well-known countries. Konzo Technopolis, also known as Silicon Savannah, is a £11 billion project by Kenya's Government that involves the construction of a planned city designed to strengthen science, innovation, and technology, thereby boosting the country's economic growth.

The development is being constructed 39 miles south of Kenya's capital, Nairobi, across a 5,000-acre land. The groundbreaking for the tech hub was done in January 2013, but construction work faced various delays. As of now, the city is being built in phases, with Phase One nearly complete.

As a flagship project under Kenya’s Vision 2030, Konza Technopolis is being developed with world-class infrastructure, including green energy solutions, affordable housing, conferencing facilities, and cutting-edge digital services.

Kenya is accelerating the development of Konza Technopolis, positioning it as a leading Smart City in Africa. The initiative was highlighted during a tour of the Silicon Savannah by Hon. William Kabogo Gitau, along with colleagues Hon. Rebecca Miano and Hon. Lee Kinyanjui, aimed at strengthening partnerships to drive growth in ICT, tourism, investment, and industrialization.

The survey by the research firm CPS international, sponsored by the Pan African Education Trust, found East African universities to be increasingly embracing ICT in teaching and learning and comparing favourably with international universities in the use of technology.

In this exclusive interview with John Paul Okwiri, CEO of Konza Technopolis, Kenya’s ambitious smart city project, we explore the transformative role Konza is playing in advancing Kenya’s digital economy and achieving Vision 2030. Dubbed the African Silicon Savannah, Konza is positioned as a leading innovation ecosystem and Special Economic Zone, designed to attract global investors in ICT-enabled services, life sciences, engineering, and digital infrastructure.

Konza has successfully completed Phase One infrastructure, including clean water systems, high-speed internet, energy distribution, stormwater drainage, and the establishment of a Tier III Uptime Certified National Data Center. With more than 100 out of 147 land parcels allocated, the city now offers a plug-and-play environment for investors looking to enter the African tech investment space.

Recently, there was a lot of excitement stirred up when Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile operator, released the Application Program Interface (API) for its mobile money service M-PESA to local and international developers.

The value in this release lies in the opportunities for integration to mobile money which developers of applications and solutions now possess. In its announcement, Safaricom took the time to spell out some of the opportunities that this move was introducing to the app development space and it pledged to organise workshops where issues around the integration would be explored.

Nic Rudnick, CEO of The Liquid Telecom Group, has outlined the company’s expansion of its fibre network in South Africa and announced that CrashPlan, its backup and restore service, is now available to businesses across Africa.

Liquid Telecom will be investing around R250 million (US$ 17.5 million) in laying new fibre in South Africa’s northern provinces, providing connectivity to the major cities and towns. Wholesale capacity will be available to mobile and fixed-line operators, other service providers and businesses of all sizes.

Benguerir’s forum confronted the uncomfortable truth and staged a rare, unflinching reckoning with the hardware deficit behind AI-powered urbanism.

The applause had barely settled from the opening ceremony when the third edition of the Smart Green City Benguerir-Africa Forum pivoted from pleasantries to provocation.

Convened at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) on Tuesday and moderated by Conference Chair Aawatif Hayar, the inaugural keynote session assembled four voices spanning techno-anthropology, semiconductor engineering, industrial systems integration, and live digital-twin deployment – all orbiting a single, disquieting proposition: that the entire smart city edifice rests on a foundation most countries neither own nor control.

Benguerir’s forum crystallized a continental consensus: Africa’s smart city future hinges not on imported algorithms but on locally forged, socially anchored AI ecosystems steered by universities and territorial governance.

The third edition of the Smart Green City Benguerir-Africa Forum convened on Tuesday at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) campus, assembling diplomats, governors, tech executives, and academics from over a dozen countries to make the case that African cities must forge their own models of intelligent urbanism rather than import them wholesale from abroad.

This technological and indeed digital revolution is increasingly leaving no area uninfluenced by its radical transformation.

"From health to education, mobile technology is changing the way all sectors of society do business," Pule said at the Second e-Skills Summit 2012 and Global ICT Forum on Human Capital Development in Cape Town this week.

Pule said a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey indicated that South Africa and Kenya were leading in mobile health deployments on the continent.

Having built an ecosystem to provide voice calls, cellular networks are ideally suited to provide the next wave of digital services and financial inclusion. "Mobile will be at the center of driving digital inclusion and connectivity," says Rob Shuter, Group CEO of MTN, the largest mobile operator in Africa.

It seems like a logical thing for the chief executive of a network to say but his point is well made that the vast ecosystem created by mobile operators is arguably better suited to financial inclusion than any other service provider.

Mobile communications help create virtuous circle in Africa Closing the digital divide in Africa is a primary goal for stakeholders from operators to governments to NGOs. Ensuring its more than 1 billion citizens can participate in the global economy and raise living standards across the region will require commitment and time, but can create a virtuous circle that will benefit all.

On the supply side, public/private partnerships and the many national broadband plans have help spur investment, and dramatically increase the availability of telecom services in Africa. This access is helping to bring many out of the informal or shadow economy. Business benefits from this access by becoming more productive, while governments benefit from the additional tax revenues—which can help fund additional infrastructure investment. For example, if a farmer can get a text to tell him which location will give him the best price for his goods, can save valuable time and increase his income. Given that large swaths of Africans make their living in agriculture, the multiplier effect can be profound.

Experts gathered for Africa's first mobile health summit on Tuesday hailed the use of phone technology as a new frontier in improving patient care in poor countries. But a government minister in South Africa, which is hosting the summit, called for caution over issues of regulation, confidentiality and cost to patients.

The debate came as the World Health Organisation released a major report (pdf) charting the worldwide use of mobile phone technology in healthcare. It finds that 83% out of 122 countries surveyed use mobile phone technology for services that include free emergency calls, text messaging with pill reminders and health information and transmission of tests and lab results.

It is said that passengers who travel on Ethiopian Airlines often ask airline staff if there will be any food available on the flight because of the lingering images of Live Aid and the 1985 drought.

The reality is that Ethiopia is a country full of food and while the threat of famine is only one failed harvest away, the story underscores how little Africa is understood by people who have never been there and are unlikely ever to go.

There’s a more specific area called M-health, which employs mobile technology to provide medical services.

For example, patient data can now be accessed remotely by doctors. But m-health also encompasses mobile apps and interactive mobile sites for patients to follow a diet or fitness regimen.

Traditional definitions of broadband have a narrow focus on bandwidth and speed. This paper uses a wider definition, as broadband policy needs to consider the entire ‘eco-system’ of internet and data services from both a demand and supply-side perspective.

Over the past six years, we have seen a great deal of activity in Africa's telecom market as providers have invested in infrastructure such as carrier-neutral data centers, open peering internet exchange points, national and regional fibre links and submarine cables. The next step will be to host more content within Africa, rather than in Europe and the U.S. - 90% of African internet content is hosted outside the continent today. We'd like to see that figure reversed so that 80 or 90% of content is hosted within Africa.

Hausiku said this during a recent speech at a workshop titled?"Leadership Capacity-Development for Improved Delivery of Public Services in Africa Using ICT" held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from July 23 to 25, Namibia Press Agency reported.

The workshop was aimed at seeking ways in which African Union's Public or Civil Services Ministers could apply modern technologies to reinvent and re-engineer the service delivery systems to meet the expectations of citizens.

The programme would involve using VSATs, which are “very small aperture terminals.” These are earthbound stations used in satellite communications.

After failing to secure support for a US$2 billion broadband project to connect all African countries, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) is now setting up an Internet service linking parliaments on the continent.

The African Union Pan-African parliament network was officially opened last week by South African President Jacob Zuma, with the aim of speeding up regional integration to enhance scientific development and technological innovation across the continent.