The Government of Kenya has ambitious plans to rapidly scale up its digital economy with an aim of creating a formidable $100 billion economy from a total of $7 billion by the year 2035.
ICT Principal Secretary John Tanui reiterated, kind of reaffirmed the government’s push to grow Kenya’s digital economy in a recent consultative session, about possible regulatory frameworks. Speaking to data center operators and cloud service providers based in Nairobi, Tanui said that making progress on the country’s digital transformation will really hinge on solid teamwork, between the public sector and private sector, not one side alone. He also pointed out that Kenya can pick up useful lessons from how countries like India and Malaysia moved fast in digital growth, there coordinated investments and supportive policies helped speed up innovation and the uptake of technology.
In the region, Kenya is currently the second largest digital economy with almost 20 active data centers. But officials think there is much more potential in the sector that is being untapped. By working together, the government believes the digital economy might be able to bring in 15-20 per cent of the national GDP by the time it reaches the medium term goal of 40 per cent in the long term.
Strengthening Data Governance and AI Infrastructure
The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy is working hard on new policies for new technologies in order to facilitate this huge economic growth. The government is currently working toward the finalization of a strong Data Governance Framework, following the establishment of an existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategy in Kenya.
It is a framework designed to ensure that all the data is standardized, making it easier for new AI systems to integrate and analyze data. Tanui said the key pillars of AI policies would be solid infrastructure, data accessibility, and research, skills building, and innovation.
The authorities are also actively working to substantially boost investment in local digitization, data storage and computing capabilities to meet the needs of modern data processing. One of the goals of these initiatives is to make Kenya the region’s top innovativeness hub in line with the Kenya Vision 2030 technological goal.
Regulatory authorities such as the Communications Authority of Kenya aim to make the country the final gateway to Eastern and Central Africa’s digital world by establishing a stable, well-regulated environment that will draw in more cloud service providers from the outside.
