Cabinet Secretary for Information Communication and the Digital Economy Eliud Owalo has called upon the private sector and investors to come on board and put in resources in revamping digital projects.
Owalo said investing in projects like the Konza Technopolis will make it better for Kenyans to benefit and realize their IT related goals.
He further emphasized on a symbiotic working relationship between the government and the private sector asking them to channel resources that will help the government fast track its policies and implementation of digitizing its operations.
He said the state will go out of its way to facilitate partnerships with investors to achieve the dream of Kenya being ICT sufficient.
Speaking during a high-level consultative meeting between the Council of Governor’s (CoG) ICT and Knowledge Management Committee, Senate Standing Committee on ICT and Sector Partners in Mombasa, Owalo said that the government has sufficient pilot projects that need funding for them to be operational.
“The mutual relationship will go a long way to achieving the mandate of digitizing the country.
The agenda of this meeting is to facilitate discussions between the two levels of government and key stakeholders on the strategies for adopting ICT and identifying opportunities in the sector,” he said.
The CS noted that Kenya has made a major step in service delivery whereby a total of 5700 services are boarded on the E-citizen platform with initial emphasis on KRA services, health services, creative economy, E-learning and digital business platforms.
The CS also pointed out that digital entrepreneurship is another important element to be embraced in the digitalization of the economy adding that the government’s efforts to leverage on technology will make the country a producer of both computer hardware and software.
“We have partnered with the private sector so that in the not-so-distant future we are soon going to locally assemble smart enabled phones available in the Kenyan market at a unit cost of about Sh. 4000,” he said.
