What The Konza Technopolis Promises

60 Km south of Nairobi sits a 5,000-acre piece of land that has been earmarked for a multi-billion shilling technopolis. A technopolis ‘technology city’ is an area with a collection of buildings dedicated to scientific research on a business footing. Typically businesses and organizations in the cities focus on product advancement and innovation. A ground breaking ceremony of the project is scheduled for September this year, as part of Kenya Vision 2030 flagship projects. A master plan for the phase one of the Kshs. 800 billion project has been drafted by International Design Engineers, Pell Frischmann from London, UK. This phase will include a science and technology park spearheaded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, a Business Processing and Outsourcing (BPO) park, world class hotels, a stadium and other social amenities typical of a city.

But what causes excitement about this project? Kenya intends to use the facility to promote conference tourism and is preparing a bid for the 2018 GSMA World Congress.
The annual meeting brings together 800 of the world’s mobile operators, more than 200 technology companies and about 50,000 IT executives. The new city will be under Konza Technology City Authority, a new parastatal to be created to ensure continuity of the project. Various firms will be competing for contracts to build Kenya’s multi-billion Shilling dream ICT park on a 5,000-acre site south of Nairobi. In the list of contenders are India’s Mahindra, Tata Infrastructure, Leasing and Financial Services, Wipro from America and global technology firm IBM. Winners of the master builder tender are expected to develop property on location and upon conclusion lease it out (for 99 years) or sell it to interested buyers.

Similar cities already exist in Malaysia (PutraJaya), Panama (Pacifico), the Philippines (Subic-Clark) and China (Shenzhen). Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) ventures have recorded tremendous growth globally. For instance, India took over most of the BPO services – from search engine optimization to contact center services, an avenue that Kenya will be pursuing. India had revenues of US$10.9 billion from offshore BPO and US$30 billion from IT and total BPO (expected in FY 2008). Important centers in India are Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Patna and New Delhi.India thus has some 5-6% share of the total BPO Industry, but a commanding 63% share of the offshore component.

In the Philippines, pioneer BPO companies developed and expanded their services not only in the country’s capital but to other key cities such as Cebu in the south. Other prominent examples include the Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan, The Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, NanKang Software Park, Cambridge Science Park and NETpark in County Durham, England, Pardis Technology Park in Iran and Daedeok Innopolis in South Korea. Security risk is the major drawback with Business Process Outsourcing. Outsourcing of an Information System, for example, can cause security risks both from a communication and from a privacy perspective.

If Kenya decides to set up a BPO park at the Konza Technolopolis, using world class infrastructure and technology, the park would to facilitate research, education and business, creating thousands of jobs for the innovate ‘techies’ with a business acumen. Besides building area, these parks offer a number of shared resources, such as uninterruptible power supply, telecommunications hubs, reception and security, management offices, restaurants, bank offices, convention center, parking, internal transportation, entertainment and sports facilities, etc. In this way, the park offers considerable advantages to hosted companies, by reducing overhead costs with these facilities.

The new city is part of a strategic plan to position Kenya as the region’s technology hub, using the development to entice venture capitalists to finance local companies and international companies to set up base in the country. Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as biotechnology, IT, software, etc. The typical venture capital investment occurs after the seed funding round as growth funding round in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event, such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital is a subset of private equity. Therefore all venture capital is private equity, but not all private equity is venture capital. For local talent, this is a reason why the project should be exciting!

Technology For Entertainment

In June this year, a holographic telepresence session was demonstrated at the Cisco Expo 2011 at the KICC - for the first time in Africa. A 3D image of a Cisco Executive at San Jose was beamed to a screen in front of an audience in Nairobi, creating an almost real life interactive experience. This was similar to the CNN's holographic election coverage in November 2008 in the US. The cable news network projected 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station's election center in New York. The female reporter seen in the CNN newsroom was actually miles away but appeared to be standing on stage inside the room courtesy the "hologram technology". The concept of 3D telepresence, a real-time dynamic hologram depicting a scene occurring in a different location, attracted considerable public interest since it was depicted in the original Star Wars film in 1977.

Holography is a technique that is used to display objects or scenes in three dimensions. Such three-dimensional (3D) images, or holograms, can be seen with the unassisted eye and are very similar to how humans see the actual environment surrounding them. A practical method of producing truly three-dimensional images that do not require the viewer to wear special eyewear has many potential applications - in telemedicine, mapping and entertainment, for instance. A 50 Hz nanosecond pulsed laser is used to write the holographic pixels. Multicoloured holographic 3D images are produced by using angular multiplexing, and the full parallax display employs spatial multiplexing. However, the challenge for most entertainment devices is the lack of the capability to update images with sufficient speed to convey movement.

Apart from holographic telepresence, television series such as 24, NCIS, CSI NY, Bones and Grey's Anatomy, have been featuring technologies such as HD telepresence, GSM triangulation and 3D Project Mapping. Also growing in popularity is 3D gaming, both online and offline. Modern game or graphics engines generally provide a scene graph, which is an object-oriented representation of the 3D game world which often simplifies game design and can be used for more efficient rendering of vast virtual worlds. As game engine technology matures and becomes more user-friendly, the application of game engines has broadened in scope. To facilitate this accessibility, new hardware platforms are now being targeted by game engines, including mobile phones (e.g. Android phones, iPhone) and web browsers.

3D projection mapping has recently emerged as one of the subtle forms of advertising, with big companies like Nokia, Samsung and BMW projecting beautiful 3D video displays on buildings around the world and sharing their campaigns on the web. 3D projection is any method of mapping three-dimensional points to a two-dimensional plane. As most current methods for displaying graphical data are based on planar two-dimensional media, the use of this type of projection is widespread, especially in computer graphics, engineering and drafting. Using the 3D projection mapping technique video artists are able to project images, video and motion graphics onto buildings and other 3D objects to make it look as if the objects are moving, morphing, and changing structure.

Computer Generated Imagery, or CGI, is an emerging aspect that has changed motion picture special effects. Digital compositing allows far more control and creative freedom than optical compositing, and does not degrade the image like analogue (optical) processes. Digital imagery has enabled technicians to create detailed models, matte "paintings," and even fully realized characters with the malleability of computer software. The most spectacular use of CGI has been the creation of photographically realistic images of fantasy creations. Images could be created in a computer using the techniques of animated cartoons or model animation. In 1993, stop-motion animators working on the realistic dinosaurs of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park were retrained in the use of computer input devices.

What we commonly known as animation is actually called rendering in CGI. Rendering is the final process of creating the actual 2D image or animation from the prepared scene. This can be compared to taking a photo or filming the scene after the setup is finished in real life. The mode of CGI is making its way into the local entertainment content such as Ngukinyukia by Kayamba Africa, Reuben Kigame's Mushukuruni and the Sunflower Kids Club's Where Will I go, Twamwimbia by Balozi Productions. Rendering may take from fractions of a second to days for a single image/frame. In general, different methods are better suited for either photo-realistic rendering, or real-time rendering.