After the pomp and fan fare , the dust is slowly settling. For a moment even I was caught in the euphoria of the country’s silver jubilee. Since independence where do we stand, have we made any progress or still are we mark timing.
Below is my top 5 list of where of the use of ICT to enhance the livelihood of Kenyans.
1. M-PESA – someone said, “PayPal does 8 million transactions in a day” then another responded to him, “M-PESA does those way before lunch time on a slow day”. I guess that says it all.
2. M-KOPA – This company whose little is know about by the general public help Kenyans in the rural Kenya procure solar products does it for me. With 40,000 customers within the first year of operation one only needs to visit there website and read about this company’s inspiring story.
3. Mobile Phones – Right now we might take it for granted that even primary school kids have them phones. However the culture of mobile phone has only been around since early 2000s.
4. Undersea fiber optic cables- This is fairly recent and I got to admit that has a huge impact. My boss always reminds us how he once worked for an ISP where the bandwidth was 256 KB/s. Right now kids are engaging tweefs all over the place with the same bandwidth in their phone thanks to the high speed internet courtesy of the fiber optic revolution.
5.Interactive SMS and USSD – To others this is mostly recognized as mobile banking but in its wider realm involved every kind of transaction made possible these days by use of SMS and USSD. This ranges from bank account balance queries to candidate results. Its potential hasn’t been tapper properly and am hopeful that this is one are which offers massive growth potential where ICT is concerned
I cant forget to talk about the failed attempt at harnessing technology as experienced in the previous general elections back in march but while I am in celebratory mood I can skip the details.