Nurturing Kenyan Talent

Usually, when one thinks of global ICT hubs for instance, the first images that pop up are those of US (Silicon Valley), India (Bangalore), Ireland, Korea and the Multimedia Corridor in Malaysia. Kenya has now set up a robust telecommunications infrastructure and high capacity International gateways, making Kenya a potential ICT hub of Africa. Kenya has made remarkable progress putting in place an ICT policy framework and implementation strategy, complete with measurable outcomes and time frames. In the frontline of pushing for this progress is the Kenya ICT Board. For the last three years, the Kenya ICT Board has been harping their mission of making the country a top 10 global technology hub, a mission that is not quickly understandable given the history and nature of the sector.

Since March 2010 this year, the Kenya ICT Board launched Tandaa, which brings together local content developers, IT professionals, entrepreneurs, business executives and civil society. The objective is to explore the challenges and opportunities in developing local digital content; and the consumption of the content via mobile phones, digital TV and the internet. The symposium sponsored by Google will also explore pressing issues like how to manage intellectual property, fight piracy and ensure privacy on the internet; available options and technology for reliable and secure storage of digital content; localization and mapping opportunities for civil society and businesses in Kenya; how to create social change through new media; and how to make the most of cloud computing to scale-up and offer leading services locally and internationally.

The first Tandaa symposium, held at the iHub in March 2010, focused on the history of online business in Kenya and opportunities for monetizing online initiatives. The Kenya ICT Board also hosted the second Tandaa Symposium on May 6 at the Kenya National Museum. The second symposium explored the opportunities the internet and new technology offer the film and animation industry. A panel of speakers who have used technology to reduce cost and increase quality of their products spoke about their experience and insights. The symposium featured speakers who have used the internet to distribute their work and maximize their profits. The creators of the 'Makmende' video were present at the Tandaa Symposium and spoke about how their video went viral and what it has meant for their band. Among other speakers at the symposium were Wanuri Kahiu, director of Kenya's first sci-fi film, 'Pumzi', which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Kahiu explained how she used visual effects to create her movie, illustrating the opportunities for animation artists in Kenya. Cartoonist Gado spoke about his TV show 'XYZ' and Alison Ngibuini showed how film can be used to have a positive social impact.

The iHub (innovation hub) offers an ideal environment to nurture Kenyan talent. It is located on 4th floor of the new Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Road, is outfitted with the bare essentials: bean bag chairs, a football table and a giant server pumping out 20Mbps wireless internet. The idea behind hub is to bring together a larger group of brilliant techies under one roof, where bubbling ideas can be put into practice. Developers can exchange ideas and experiences to reduce the timeline to completion of projects, unlike where isolated developers work diligently to re-invent solutions to problems that already solved by others. The iHub provides a place for people to share ideas, where you can call copyright lawyers to talk to techies about their rights, where we can all learn ways to incorporate companies in cost effective ways, where techies can talk to their mentors and where techies can have video conference links from Silicon Valley or India.

A similar forum to Tandaa is the Skunkworks. The on-line forum was started simply as a creative outlet for wandering minds and has grown into an intuitive forum for, mostly, IT professionals. The Skunkworks mailing list brings together the technology community in Kenya and beyond. The subscribers to the list have diverse background and participation in the list, like participation in any community, requires a common basis for communication etiquette. On 20th August, 2008, the New York Times featured an article on Skunkworks Kenya Group. The caption read, “The distinctive digital experience in Nairobi inspires confidence in its youthful community of programmers, bloggers and Web enthusiasts. Over the past year, about 600 people in Nairobi — most under 25 — have coalesced into a group called Skunk Works, sharing ideas and encouraging new businesses.”
The group is organizing a Barcamp event to be held on 12th and 13th of June at the iHub. This year’s event will be a combination of BarCamp Nairobi and WhereCampAfrica. BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences - open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. Barcamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. The event usually involves discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees.

Similar events are held all over the world; Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania. The first Barcamp Nairobi was held in 2008 at the Jacaranda Hotel in Westlands. The event attracted 228 attendees who included bloggers, web and mobile developers, government officials and students. Three concurrent 30 minute sessions conducted in three rooms (Ushahidi Room, ICT Board room, and the Google Room) throughout the day. At the beginning of the sessions, in typical barcamp style, campers were asked to come forward and write down what they wanted to talk about, and then the topics and agenda selected based on what people wanted to listen to.

Google has also been promoting innovative ideas through the Google Technology User Groups (GTUGs). GTUGs are user groups for people who are interested in Google's developer technology; everything from the Android and App Engine platforms, to product APIs like the YouTube API and the Google Calendar API, to initiatives like OpenSocial. A GTUG can take many forms — from just a few people getting together to watch our latest video, to large gatherings with demos and lectures, to events like code sprints and hackathons. To join a GTUG visit the directory at http://www.gtugs.org/directory to see if there's a local meetup in your area; join the GTUG discussion forum and attend the meetup. During the meetups, the members share resources, skills & knowledge about Google technology and services such as; Google Data APIs, OpenSocia, Google AJAX APIs,Google Code, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Apps, iGoogle, YouTube, Google App Engine and Google Open Source projects.

Probably one of the greatest achievements of the Kenyan innovators is the Ushahidi project, sadly inspired by the 2008 post-election violence. In order to attract global attention Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich, two of the founders and developers of the software, started an online system which would document incidents of violence using the mobile phone or a computer with Internet access. The incidents were then plotted on a map, allowing users to identify the exact location of the event or incident on a web interface. The initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world. Since then, Ushahidi has grown in popularity to similar deployments during the Haiti and Chile earth quake disasters. Ushahidi was tested and deployed with 11 different organizations directly, including the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Peace Heroes and the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights. Externally, there were 4 major alpha deployments, including Al Jazeera during the War on Gaza, Vote Report India (to monitor the recent local elections) and Pak Voices (to map incidents of violence).