The rapid growth in technology presents Kenya with an opportunity to become a middle-income knowledge economy, CS Joe Mucheru has said.
He said more than one billion electronic devices will be bought by Kenyans in the next few years. Mucheru urged young people to take advantage of this market.
“The digital market in Africa will have half-a-billion people in the next five years. We must take advantage of this,” he said.
“Already, an agreement is in place to open up our spaces to remove mobile phone roaming charges.”
The CS spoke when he paid a courtesy call on the Radio Africa Group at its Lion Place offices in Westlands, Nairobi.
The ministry has three priorities to ensure the e-government platform works well. This involves providing fibre-optic internet connectivity to every subcounty, improving services through the e-citizen platform and creating an enabling environment for the private sector to harness existing markets.
“The average salary of 18-24 year-olds in Kenya is Sh2,000. We are working with the Youth and Education ministries to create work using digital opportunities,” he said.
“By next year, we want to create one million jobs through constituency innovation hubs.”
Mucheru urged the private sector to train the youth to become digital workers so they can take advantage of the $300 billion outsourcing market, which countries such as India have dominated for years.
“The laptop project for schools is part of this long-term strategy to enhance digital literacy. We will provide computer labs for other classes,” he said.
The CS said 960,000 laptops will be delivered by December. About 66,000 teachers have been trained and content developed by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development.
Radio Africa Group MD Patrick Quarcoo urged the government to create data centres in all ministry websites so the public can access more information on development projects.
“The Open Data Initiative was a good idea, but most of the times you will find the information in it is not up-to-date,” Quarcoo said. “All ministries should have similar data centres to disseminate information.”
The ODI was re-launched by the government in July last year to increase public access to information, as ministries give their data through a portal.
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Quelle/Source: The Star, 22.09.2016
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