New Room for Startups

When you talk of startups in the Kenyan ICT industry, Carft Silicon will most likely come to mind. Craft Silicon has grown over the last decade to become a force to reckon with regionally in the development and implementation of financial institutions around Africa. Key among its clientele are the Equatorial Commercial Bank, Jamii Bora Bank, Nakumatt Holdings Limited and Safaricom Limited in Kenya as well as Fullerton India Credit Company Limited, Dar es Salaam Community Bank and First Bank Nigeria (FBN) Microfinance Limited in other regions around Africa as well as beyond. The Kenyan market is rapidly changing. Contrary to the perpetual dominance by the ‘big players’ in the ICT space, there is, certainly, new room for startups. Moreover, there is a growing interest in local solutions to local problems using technology.

The second edition of Pivot 25 held on June 5th and 6th in Nairobi is a case in point. The regional competition allowed technology enthusiasts to show cases of their talent. The event provided an avenue for upcoming mobile entrepreneurs to market their products and receive support from interested capitalists or finance initiatives. Participants in the competition were drawn from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi and South Sudan. The event was organised by m:lab East Africa and its consortium partners led by the World Wide Web Foundation, iHub, University of Nairobi and eMobilis. The sponsors of the event included; Nokia, Equity Bank, Samsung, Google, Tigo and Elma.

There were five categories in the competition; Mobile Payments/Commerce, Mobile Gaming, Entertainment and Utilities, Business and Enterprise, Government, Agriculture and Education and Health. Out of the 100 participating teams, the best 25 mobile applications were selected to pitch for their products at the Pivot 25 conference in Nairobi which was conjoined with an array of interviews with various executive in the ICT industry. Prizes of $5,000 were awarded to the winners of each of the 5 categories. Now, isn’t that good startup capital? The overall winner will go to pitch for their product at the DEMO conference in California.

This year’s winner were mShop by MTL Systems from Kenya in the Mobile Payments/Commerce category, Whive by Space Kenya in the Mobile Gaming, Entertainment and Utilities category, Uhasibu by PlusPeople in the Business and Enterprise category, SchoolSMS by Tusqee Systems in the Government, Agriculture and Education category and MedKenya by Shimba Technologies who were the overall winners in the Health category.Another upcoming event presents an opportunity for startups. In October 24-26 this year, the first DEMO conference in Africa will be held at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC) in Nairobi. DEMO has partnered with the U.S. Department of State, Microsoft, Nokia, African Development Bank, USAID, and Global Entrepreneurship to form the Liberalizing Innovation Opportunity Nations (LIONS@FRICA). LIONS@FRICA will be facilitating the first DEMO event in Africa.

DEMO has been in existence for 21 years, providing a platform for innovators to launch their products. Previous DEMO events have helped introduce new products and services that have become well-known brands such as Adobe Acrobat, WebEx, Salesforce.com and Tivo. Scouts from established companies like Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Symantec, HP, SAP and Yahoo would attend the event to invest in viable ideas. Essentially, the event is a global stage for startup to pitch to venture capitalists. Other International DEMO conferences including: two DEMO conferences in the United States, DEMO Asia, DEMO China and DEMO Brazil.

On the African continent front, another startup event will be held in Senegal. The Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Startup Boot Camp will held on July 10th and 11th 2012 in the capital of Senegal, Dakar. The event has been organized by LIONS@FRICA, by CTIC Dakar which is a Senegalese incubator and the African Development Bank. During the boot camp, the startup entrepreneurs are intensive trained on creative and innovative thinking and harnessing talent in the fields of ICT, energy, healthcare and agriculture. The boot camp is available to a representative from 100 of the most-qualified ventures. There is a second day of mentorship and venture pitching on Wednesday, July 11 that will be available to the forty most-qualified ventures. A similar event was held in Marakesh, Morocco, on January 15-16 to nurture creative ideas and innovation.

Justice Not Delayed

In 2010, the cabinet approved the Judicial Service Bill 2010 that would revolutionize the Kenya Judicial System. This was the beginning of judicial reforms. The bill would make provision for judicial services and administration of the Judiciary, provide structures in the appointment of members of the Judicial Service Commission, make provision for the establishment of a Judiciary Fund, provide for the procedure of appointment, discipline and removal of judges, other judicial officers and staff and establish the National Council on Administration of Justice. By the beginning of 2012, Kenya had a Judicial Service Commission, a new Chief Justice and the vetting of judges had commenced. But is everything ok?

An aspect of judicial reforms that had not been captured was the mitigation of the delays experienced in the judicial system. The Kenyan Judicial System has in the past been plagued with the backlog of cases denying justice to the populace. One of the ways of dealing with this problem is automation of the entire judicial system to help citizens get justice in the shortest time possible. A good comparison is the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has embraced technology in their courts - with a click of a mouse button; the judges were able to see the number of pending cases and also the lifespan of the cases. Such techniques greatly reduce the time required to for the bench to deliver a judgment.

There are various initiatives by the Kenya Judiciary towards adopting technology. Recently, the National Youth Service posted 62 copy typists to the Judiciary to clear the backlog of records that have held up judgments and appeals because they were not typed and other important data entries. After the digitization of the court records, the next challenge will be in the training of the staff and the bench on utilization this content. In fact, according to Chief Justice, Dr. Willy Mutunga, the Judiciary will re-train magistrates on new technology to enable quick completion of cases. Magistrates who will be hired will not have clerks; they will only be supplied with laptops to record the proceedings of the cases.

Back in 2010, another initiative in Kenya’s judiciary was in the launching of the first ever telepresence solution for the hearing of cases in a partnership between Cisco, Safaricom, and the judiciary. The first case was relayed from Mombasa city where the Court of Appeal heard three cases via telepresence where the bench sat in Nairobi while the respective lawyers were in Mombasa. Telepresence, which integrates life-size High Definition (HD) video with high-quality sound in a room setup, creates the feel of actually being in the same room as participants at other locations. The solution would greatly reduce the need to travel over long distances; probably it would improve security if it introduced between the High Courts and maximum prisons. Often, prisoners have to be transported to the Nairobi Central Business District just to hear their cases. Wouldn’t it be more secure to have their lawyers argue their cases in court as they follow the proceedings from the prison?

With the assistance of the ICT Board and the Judiciary, the Judiciary has already finalized phase one of the physical organization and quantification of court documents to be digitized. The activity involved preparation of the files through cleansing of files for the last 10 years. A total of 325,000 files in the Court of Appeal and High Court Divisions of all High Court Stations in the country i.e. Milimani, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Nyeri, Meru, Embu, Machakos, Malindi, Kericho, Kisii, Kakamega, Bungoma, Busia and Kitale Law Courts were cleansed. With the upcoming elections, the Kenya Judiciary System is expected to be strained by loads of law suits from the election results. It is thus prudent for the Judiciary to be prepared, considering the devolved system of Government according to the new constitution. The first step towards offering justice at the county level is the digitization of the judicial process.

Similar initiatives in other parts of the world have proved to be beneficial. For instance, the Integrated Electronic Litigation Systems (iELS) was an initiative by the Singapore Judiciary to replace the existing Electronic Filing System (EFS). EFS was conceived and developed in the mid- to late-1990s, and iELS represented the second phase in implementing technology to enhance the litigation process in Singapore. Upon its rollout in 2011, iELS was the world's first properly "paperless" electronic court platform. The iELS was designed to deliver a modern platform for the integration of ICT systems of the Judiciary, the legal profession and litigants. It integrates workflow and electronic forms seamlessly using the content management system as the presentation layer for electronic filing. In this way, the courts are able to pro-actively track and manage pending matters

Digital TV Finally Here

In 2006, a global project to migrate from analogue TV to digital TV was initiated during a telecommunications conference in Geneva. A deadline of June 2015 was set by which all broadcasters are expected to have migrated to the digital platform. Kenya has since followed suit in the global trends and has become the third country to commence her migration to digital TV in Africa. On 9th December, 2009, the President launched digital TV in Kenya during an inauguration ceremony at the Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation (KBC) transmitting station. Since then, the technology has not been wholly availed to the public domain, but has been undergoing tests and modifications. The technology is being operated by Signet, a subsidiary of the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), specifically set up to broadcast and distribute the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) signals.

The digital TV coverage is expected to gradually spread to the rest of the country to pave way to the complete migration by the year 2012. The complete switch to digital broadcasting is expected to cost Sh6 billion (USD 80 million) and an initial Sh152 million (USD 2 million) has already been allocated. Broadcasters will be required to sign transmission contracts with Signet upon licensing by the CCK. Signet will carry private broadcasters signals free of charge, but will charge for its services after 2012. This means that broadcasters will concentrate on content development as opposed to incurring costs on none core business issues such as building and maintaining infrastructure.

The Media Owners Association (MOA) has, however, expressed its reservations towards Signet running the entire digital TV network. In fact, it is said that all of Kenya's free-to-air television broadcasters will form a joint company to obtain a license to broadcast digital signals across the country. The move is expected to end the stand-off between the Information Ministry and broadcasters such as Nation Media Group (NTV) and Royal Media Services (Citizen TV), who had protested when the second digital broadcasting license was given to China's Pan African Network Group. There are more than twenty television firms currently broadcasting in various parts of Kenya.

The migration from analog to digital TV signal has not only been slowed down by the tests and modifications, but also by the impromptu ban of Digital Video Broadcasting- Terrestrial (DVB-T1) set-top boxes and shifting focus to Digital Video Broadcasting- Terrestrial 2 (DVB-T2) in February, 2011 by the government. DVB-T2 has better picture and sound quality, more channels on the same frequency, larger coverage per transmitting station, flexibility in handling both high definition and standard definition channels and better security features to prevent unauthorized access. Access at digital TV will require Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial (DVBT) enabled TV set or an MPEG-4 digital converter.

Around Nairobi, the signal can be received in Ngong, Kajiado, parts of Machakos, Kiambu, Thika, parts of Muranga, and some parts of Embu. The Government announced that by July 2012, the DVB T2 digital TV signal would be available in 70% of the country. Briefing the stakeholders on the status of the migration process, Information and Communications Permanent Secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo said the Government was committed to ensuring that all Kenyans have access to digital TV services. The Permanent Secretary called on the private sector to import DVB T2 compliant set top boxes for sale in the country to facilitate access to digital TV services by the public. As of late 2009, 10 countries had completed the process of turning off analog terrestrial broadcasting. Many other countries had plans to do so or were in the process of a staged conversion. The first country to make a wholesale switch to digital over-the-air (terrestrial) broadcasting was Luxembourg, in 2006, followed by the Netherlands later in 2006, Finland, Andorra, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland in 2007, Belgium (Flanders) and Germany in 2008, and the United States, Denmark and South Africa in 2009.

The East African Internet Outage

In February, a ship dragging its anchor 5 Km off the coast of the Kenyan port city of Mombasa damaged The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable severely degrading the Internet and International telephony services in East Africa region. Among the countries that were affected include Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan. In a separate incidence, a cargo ship dragged its anchor over a distance of 150km in the Red Sea between Djibouti and Port Sudan, damaging three undersea cables; the EASSy; the South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 (SMW3); and the Europe-India Gateway (EIG) several days before.

Though the impact on the EaSSy cable was minimal, since traffic on EASSy exits Africa through Djibouti, the cut presents a similar challenge to the one on TEAMS – restoration timeline. Both EASSy and TEAMS had indicated a restoration timeline of up to three weeks. The outage significantly affected business operations for most companies and organizations in East Africa, mostly due to their dependence on accessibility of fast and reliable Internet. Among the multinational companies operating in the region include Google, Microsoft, IBM and Samsung. Local companies that run e-commerce applications and other platforms that depend on the Internet were hugely affected.

The two submarines cables, TEAMS and EaSSy, were completed in July 2010 and September 2009 respectively to link the East African region to the rest of the world. The TEAMS cable was originally designed to have a capacity of 1.28 terabit per second (Tbit/s) while EASSy is the highest capacity system serving sub-Saharan Africa, with a 4.72 terabit per second (Tbit/s) design capacity. SEACOM on the hand has a design capacity of 1.28 terabit per second (Tbit/s), theoretically not enough to support both TEAMS design capacity. Important to note is that the design capacities are utilized as the demand for Internet capacity from the shareholders grows. With the three submarine cables at the coast of East Africa, there were still intermittent interruptions of Internet service and in some instances total outage. Which begs the question, can we provide better redundancy to the submarines cables in the region?

Comparing the submarines cable in East Africa to those in other parts of Africa, the West African region has far much more capacity and a variety of submarine cables than the East. The West Africa Cable System (WACS) and the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) both a design capacities of 5.12 terabit per second (Tbit/s) while Globacom-1 (GLO-1) has a design capacity of 2.5 terabit per second (Tbit/s). Would these capacities provide a better redundant solution to the submarine cable in the East? What about running a terrestrial intra-Africa cable interconnecting the East to the West? Would this alleviate the challenges faced in the month of February? It would. Submarine cables landing in sub-Saharan Africa currently reach 37.4 million people within a 25-km range of landing stations, equivalent to 4.4% of the total population. Africa’s terrestrial fibre optic networks reach some 259.3 million people within a 25-km range of operational fibre nodes, 30.8% of the population.

Apart from providing redundancy and additional capacity to the submarine cables, an East to West intra-Africa terrestrial cable would provide high capacity links for traffic between the East and West African countries and enhance trade relations and commerce opportunities, already were showing by the entrance of West Africa banks and Telecos into the East African market. Currently, most terrestrial cables in Africa are within countries to distribute capacity inland and are rarely used to interconnect countries. The central African region barely has terrestrial cables and would serve as a bargaining point for running an East to West intra-African terrestrial cable. The cost of such a project would be the major inhibitant, not forgetting political conflict in some of the countries.

An example of an effective terrestrial cable is the TEA Transit Europe-Asia (TEA) terrestrial cable network between Europe and Asia via the territory of Russia. Recognizing the need that many corporations have to diversify their international networks from the traditional trans-pacific submarine cables connecting their Asian and USA/European offices, the TEA terrestrial cable systems were built between China and Europe in 2004. The Asian segment of the TEA terrestrial cable network runs over; the territory of China via cross border interconnections between Rostelecom and its Chinese partners (China Telecom and China Unicom); the territory of Japan via the Russia-Japan Submarine Cable Network (RJCN) constructed by Rostelecom and KDDI and terrestrial cable between Russia and Kazakhstan reaching Central Asia countries.

The Challenge Electronic Voting Poses

Now that elections are around the elections are around the corner, its time to rejuvenate the electronic voting debate. In fact, Kenyans in diaspora now want the government to confirm the use of electrical voting in the next general election. To avoid the recurrence of the chaos in 2007, it would be prudent to adopt technology in the next electoral process. According to the Election officials it could take six years before Kenya adopts an electronic voting system, which is attributed to the high cost of deploying the system. In an effort to initiate a gradual migration to electronic voting, IIEC has already commenced electronic voter registration in 18 constituencies. A total of about 1.5 million voters were registered and their demographic details captured – including biometric features; a facial image and fingerprint.

By definition, electronic voting encompasses different types of voting that embrace both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of vote counting. Electronic voting technology punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks. Care should be taken since electronic voting can be vulnerable and could facilitate electoral fraud. The technology has been around for a while, since punched card systems debuted in the 1960s. Currently, Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France.

Electronic voting technology has its benefits. For instance, it can speed the counting of ballots and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. It can also provide a convenient mode of voting for Kenyan in the Diasporas. However, there are some shortcomings of this technology, casing point - the United States Presidential Election of 2000 that spurred the debate about electronic voting. In the aftermath of the election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed to help states upgrade their election technology in the hopes of preventing similar problems in future elections. Unfortunately, the electronic voting systems that many states purchased to comply with HAVA actually caused problems in the presidential election of 2004.

Deployment of electronic voting systems is also complex and expensive, thus electronic ballots may not necessarily be less costly than printed ballots. The cost never goes down. Actually, the cost only goes up as the machines age and need more parts and upgrading. If Kenya were to use touch-screen voting machines, similar to a touch ATM, it would cost of between Kshs. 1.35 Million and Kshs. 2.7 Million per precinct - precinct consists of between 5 and 10 machines respectively. Other costs would include operation and maintenance of the machines, power, storage of the machines as well as programming, testing, auditing and transporting them to precincts on election days.

There are plenty of implementation and policy problems with moving to electronic voting systems, but the technology the benefits far out way these problems. Having suffered post-electoral chaos, Kenya would consider such an option that would provide an election process much more transparent for officials and voters. The benefits for citizens are immediate and obvious, in particular the improved services for voters and less time required to vote, hence shorter queues. Another advantage is that the new systems' step-by-step process will prevent situations in which a citizen mistakenly votes more than once. There is faster tabulation of results, improved accessibility, greater accuracy, and lower risk of human and mechanical errors. Recall the infamous form 16A during the 2007 General election.

Many countries have attempted to take advantage of electronic voting. Electronic voting in Estonia began in October 2005 local elections when Estonia became the first country to have legally binding general elections using the Internet as a means of casting the vote and was declared a success by the Estonian election officials. In 2005 Estonia became the first country to offer Internet voting nationally in local elections. 9,317 people voted online. In 2007, the Australian Defence Force and Defence civilian personnel deployed on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands had the opportunity to vote via the Defence Restricted Network with an Australian Electoral Commission and Defence Department joint pilot project. Electronically submitted votes were printed following polling day, and dispatched to the relevant Divisions for counting. Kenya might strive to make a mark in being the pioneer of electronic voting in Africa.