Science, Technology and Innovation Act of 2012.
‘the government
has set aside
30% of all public procuremrnt
spend to small
and medium
enterprises
owned by the
youth, persons
with disability
and women’
b)
I T Enabled Services: There are three major driving forces for
the development of the ITES sector:
•
Employment creation - This is the ability of IT outsourcing companies to generate jobs, especially those that can export their services and or expand into the region.
•
Efficiencies from adoption and utilization of IT - The National
Government has already made a commitment to Vision 2030 and as
such should direct its State Departments and all Government Owned
Entities (GOEs) to utilize local IT outsourcing companies to provide
non-core services. This would realize efficiencies in Government while
also providing the requisite leadership.
•
Development and growth of local IT outsourcing businesses The procurement and other laws (e.g. data protection) are limiting the
growth of the sub-sector. Although the government has set aside 30%
of all public procuremrnt spend to small and medium enterprises
owned by the youth, persons with disability and women by amending Public Procurement and Disposal (Preference and Reservations)
(Amendment) Regulations, this is not enough. In order to further spur
the growth of the local ITES companies, further amendments in the
procurement law with respect to ICT are necessary to enable local ICT
companies to scale up and contribute to the growth of the ICT sector.
c)
Developm ent of the I CT sector: The driving forces for developing the ICT sector in Kenya are:
•
The proliferation of mobile phones in Kenya and the ease of
adoption of mobile based services.
•
The introduction of laptops in primary schools will create pressure for local content, the need to set up local businesses for maintenance of
laptops and associated school equipment, and local assembly of these
gadgets in order to sustainably roll out to all levels of education in
both primary and secondary schools.
•
There is a need to offer and deliver both public and private online services for a population that is primarily rural and young.
Figure 15 shows Kenya’s ranking on the Networked Readiness Index
(NRI) compared with two countries in the lower middle income (Ghana
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.................................................................................................................Towards
...............a...Digital
.............Kenya
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and Senegal), two countries in the upper middle income (South Africa
and Brazil) and one country in high income (Portugal). NRI is a composite indicator composed of environment, readiness of a society to
use ICT, usage by all main stakeholders and impact of ICT on economy
and society. By 2012, Kenya was better than the LMICs. With the flagship projects proposed in this Master Plan, Kenya will improve on this
index, largely because of the improved readiness of society to use ICT
that will be realized and the expected huge impact of ICT.
Source: WEF: Global Information Technology report: 2012, 2011 & 2010
Network Readiness Rank
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
5.3.3
93
97
100
72
65
33
2012
Figure 15:
Networked
Readiness Rank
Comparisons
2011
2010
Desired Outcomes by 2017
The following outcomes will be expected by 2017:
a) At least 180,000 direct jobs.
b) At least 55 ICT companies established.
c)
Improved global competitiveness (improve Kenya’s both GII &
NRI by 15 points).
d) At least 10 successfully commercialized application innovations
(one
89
Towards a Digital Kenya
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