The Kenyan government has spared no cost to fund the country's technology start-ups and, as a result, Kenya has rapidly become Africa's technology center. With lots of technology startups that render the economy of the world smoother. With facilities like NTSA TIMS and ecitizen, Kenya's citizens will easily make it big in the technology industry really soon.
Two factors set Silicon Savannah's innovation bubble away from such clusters in other areas of the world. Next, Kenyans use technologies to address local problems. M-Farm is a clear example of this. It is an app that offers Kenyan farmers current market knowledge so that they can get the best prices for their crops. Second, Kenyans are first developing smartphone goods. It is because 99 percent of Kenya's Internet users, about 16 million people, have connected to the Internet via their mobile devices. Kenyans did not start using the Internet on their personal computers the way many Americans did.
Below are the top three factors why Kenya is the leading software center in Africa.
1. Efficiency Breeding Operation
Let us recall the first two technical success stories that have arisen from Kenya during the last decade. These innovations have concentrated on the growth and opportunities of mobile technology in the world.The first M-PESA was introduced by Safaricom in 2007. With 42% of Kenya's GDP pouring through a pioneering mobile payment network and more than 677 billion payments, it is arguably the country's most promising breakthrough to date.
Several reasons lead to the tech boom in Kenya. In 2007, a Kenyan telecommunications firm introduced a website named M-Pesa, which helps users to pay for products and services via their mobile devices. M-Pesa revolutionized banking in a world where few people had credit cards or connections to banks. Today, 74% of Kenyan adults use mobile currency, making it easier for ICT startups to embrace customer payments.
A second contributing factor came in 2009 when the Kenyan government helped set up the fiber-optic Internet. The cables helped the country to jump over established satellite technologies and gave people cheap access to the Internet, whether on computers or cell phones. (Also, although technology is booming, the Kenyan Government is continuing to update its current conventional infrastructure)
The Ushahidi crowd visualization tools have entered the scene. After the 2007–2008 elections in Kenya, the program was used to identify mansion regions. According to Ory Okolloh, one of the company's creators, the enterprise began as an "ad hoc community of technicians and bloggers hammering out applications to find a way to obtain more and more knowledge regarding post-election crime."
Since then, technology has been used in a wide variety of projects in more than 20 countries around the world, from monitoring lions and wildlife elephants in Tanzania to helping search and rescue teams save lives during Haiti's 2010 earthquake.
The progress of these two interventions has given rise to the creation of a community of creativity in Kenya. Just a few years after Ushahidi 's success, one of its members, Erik Hermann, formed iHub, a group of developers , architects, academics and scientists based on innovation in Nairobi.
The network has more than 16,000 subscribers, and some of its main projects include mFarm — a mobile agriculture app, Rupu — the Kenya Party, and the EatOut Restaurant Search Engine. iHub fosters an environment in which the community of start-ups and entrepreneurship can prosper.
2. iHub Ecosystem
The iHub ecosystem and the like generated a plethora of technological expertise in Nairobi, pulling together a variety of top tech firms around the world, such as Google, Cisco, Nokia, Siemens and Airtel. Corporations have also formed regional offices to draw on the rising talent pool.In addition to technology centers and incubators, Moringa's positions are reinventing the US boot camp coding model to suit the East African industry. Moringa School has students creating apps and studying specialized coding languages from day one.
3. Government funding for development
Perhaps the most important explanation for Kenya's growth in the technology discourse in Africa is that its government supports the philosophy of entrepreneurship and innovation in the region.In 2006, the Government of Kenya contributed to the country's Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure by partnering with the Emirates Telecommunication Establishment (Etisalat) to the construction of its U-boat fiber optic cable network, which enhanced internet speed and reliability in the region.
On the regulatory side, the Government introduced an e-Registry Team to help companies get licensed more easily by raising violation risks and to include a consolidated online platform for entrepreneurs to obtain company licensing and registration records.
It is accurate that creativity is taking place across Africa, not just in Kenya. Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda, for example, are three core regions where creativity thrives and transformation presents fresh investment opportunities and disrupts conventional industries.
Yet something new is happening in the 'Silicon Savannah,' as Kenya is affectionately called.
The best elements of creativity, innovative culture, climate and government funding have come together to create something special in the world. The atmosphere of creativity that I believe has only just begun.
