The World Bank has approved 55.1 million U.S. dollars to help Kenya scale up transformative Information and Communications Technology (ICT) applications.
The Bank said on Monday that Kenya will use the funds to scale up digital inclusion, content development, and e-government and shared services.
World Bank Country Director for Kenya Johannes Zutt said the additional finance will enable Kenya to consolidate the initiatives it has made in the ICT sector, including the open data initiative.
“Information technology has on average contributed one percentage point to Kenya ’s growth since 2000, and opened a path for achieving remarkable improvements in transparency and also in governance,” Zutt said in a statement issued in Nairobi.
The new funding will increase financing under the Kenya Transparency and Communications Infrastructure Project (KTCIP) to 169.5 million dollars
The East African nation will also use Kenya will expand technology-based platforms for transparency and accountability to increase opportunities for economic transformation and growth.
The Task Team Leader Isabel Neto said since it was approved in 2007, the KCTIP project has contributed to the sector through activities in connectivity, content development, and selected eGovernment applications, says.
“It will continue to support selected areas to further increase transparency and accountability,” Neto said.
KTCIP is part of the Regional Communications Infrastructure Program, which also include investments in Burundi and Madagascar.
The project will support the government to expand its Open Data initiative and the Integrated Financial Management Information System using the re-engineered business process to enhance accountability and efficiency including roll-out to the new counties.
It will also increase the government’s investment in cyber security and support investments to simply and improve immigration and population registry systems.
The government and the Bank will also explore a public-private partnership business model for e-government applications.
The East African nation has put in place the second-fastest broadband on the continent (after Ghana), which has reduced the wholesale internet capacity prices by over 90 percent and increased internet penetration from 3 percent to 37 percent of the population in the past decade.
Today, about 90 percent of Kenyan adults have or have the use of a mobile phone. Building on these improvements, Kenya now wants to use ICT to improve governance and transparency.
Under the new constitution, the government has promised to improve openness and transparency, and in July last year, it launched the open data portal - a revolutionary initiative by the government and private innovators who are using the information on the portal to develop new ICT applications. It is also is a leading global incubator of applications for development.
Kenya is now widely recognized as a world leader in using ICT as a game changer and a global leader in IT applications.
These include the home grown mobile-money platforms like M-Pesa, which are enabling increasing numbers of poorer Kenyans to use their phones for financial transactions, bringing quasi-financial services to them for the very first time.
It is also widely recognized as a role model on using ICT for financial inclusion and inclusive development.
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Quelle/Source: Coastweek, 06.04.2012
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