Business
Update: Construction of Konza Techno City to transform Kenya into major tech hub
Konza is expected to cement Kenya’s role as a regional technology leader in Africa. With a well developed technology sector, Kenya became the first country in Africa to open its government to the public by making millions of pages of internal governments documents available online.
The country’s M-Pesa cell phone banking service is now being used all over the world for purchases and money transfers, and according to the US Time magazine, Ushahidi has been used “in 128 countries to map everything from [the 2010] earthquake in Haiti to [the] Japanese tsunami and the Arab Spring.”
The unveiling of the Konza project is being seen as a natural progression of Kenya’s aspirations to attract corporate investments in technology.
In 2012, IBM set up its first African research lab in Nairobi, joining renowned American companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel that have their regional headquarters Kenya. Konza is heavily-influenced by similar “new cities”, like Cyberjaya in Malaysia, Cyber City in Mauritius and Egypt’s Smart Village, says the Wired.
The project is expected to cost US$10 billion and create more than 200,000 jobs when completed in 2030. There are plans for an electronic manufacturing plant, an international financial centre and a convention center.
The government is offering tax breaks to companies as an incentive to move and invest in Konza.
Amid the euphoria and excitement over the prospects for Silicon Savannah, there have been some voices of caution. Technology experts at the Mobile Web East Africa conference held in Nairobi in February warned Kenya’s technology industry against copying the Silicon Valley business model. Their concern was that most of the companies being formed in Kenya were based on a single app or software program.
