Kenya Courts Silicon Valley as it Aims to Become Africa’s High-Tech Centre
 

San Francisco has been the leading tourist city in the US for the past
few years in a row. But the Kenyan visitors to the Bay Area in early
October were not interested in the breathtaking Golden Gate Bridge or
Lombard Street, the world’s most crooked. They had their sights on
Silicon Valley, the undisputed capital of America’s high-tech industry
and home to such greats as Google, Facebook, HP and more recently
Twitter.

It turns out that San Francisco’s tourism appeal and technology
credentials are in fact closely related. What makes Silicon Valley so
great? I asked Dan Kaplan, Product Marketing Manager at Twilio, one of
the new startups dotting the valley. ‘The first thing is that it is a
place that rich people want to live. People who make their money want
to stay,” he told me, paraphrasing Y Combinator founder Paul Graham.
“Secondly is that it has two top-notch world-class technical
institutions, Stanford and Berkeley, which produce talented engineers
every year who are hungry to build new tech companies.”

Twilio describes itself as a platform for building telephony
applications in the cloud. It is currently available for developers in
the US and Canada only but the Kenya ICT Board still met with two top
executives. In a forum also attended by Information Minister Samuel
Poghisio, the executives wondered what carrots Kenya would dangle to
attract them.

In its charm offensive in Silicon Valley, the blandly named ICT Board
(techies prefer something with more pizzazz and less formal) pitched
the planned $7 billion Konza Technology City. The ground-breaking for
the project 50km from Nairobi is expected in coming weeks and the
Government is keen to see “Africa’s silicon savannah” come to
fruition.

One of the pioneer valley firms Hewlett Packard has intimated that it
may be leaving the personal computer business but its other lines of
business will remain, including one related to “future cities.’”‘You
need to take a realistic schedule as you move ahead with Konza, many
other governments stumble because they want to do it all by tomorrow,”
said Walter Reichert, International Trade Development Director in
charge of Government Affairs at HP. He suggests a phased out
implementation for Konza, something the State has already put into
drawings and plans for the techno city.

Mr Reichert has good background for his advice. “Father of Ethernet”
Robert Metcalfe, a leading voice in the American tech space has
famously noted that “Silicon Valley is the only place on Earth not
trying to figure out how to become Silicon Valley”.

Not to be fazed, Information ministry officials and ICT Board managers
shuttled from one office to another selling Kenya as an IT
destination, answering questions and smiling. We were not allowed into
an hour- long meeting at Google but shared services project manager
Harry Mwangi was enthusiastic about the encounter.

“It went quite well. They shared with us trends globally which are in
line with activities on the ground in Kenya and validated the fact
that Kenya is a leader in the region in online and mobile activity,’
he said. The board has just finished an ICT masterplan for Kenya and
is currently receiving feedback from the public before proceeding with
it.

Google is already digitising tonnes of government data in Kenya
especially parliamentary proceedings and court rulings. It has just
launched a Kenyan version of its popular video sharing website
Youtube.co.ke. One user on the site with the moniker ‘Man143Steph637’
faulted the ICT Board on the comments section of an NTV story on the
tour: “…Kenya ICT Board has been spending too much money for travel
overseas for things we never see benefits from. Ever since the board
and its CEO have been going to Silicon Valley (sic) and other places
on the globe including London, have they not learnt enough so that
they can now concentrate on implementing it?’

But board’s CEO Paul Kukubo responded to the criticism, saying: ”Our
vision is that Kenya becomes a top-ten global ICT hub…There is a time
for everything and now is a time to position Kenya aggressively while
we have the world’s attention in ICT!

Board’s vision
The party also toured the reputable Stanford University, credited with
nurturing Silicon Valley’s founding firms. Kenyan David Mwangi, 25
just graduated with a Masters in Computer Science and was hired by
Google a few months ago as a developer. I asked him why he did not
come back to Kenya. ‘The environment is not right, not yet,”“he shot
back. “Somebody with a revolutionary idea would not thrive in Kenya at
the moment because the exposure and access to financing has not
developed,’ he opined.

I asked another respected Silicon Valley insider Paul Bragiel what
makes the place so enviable? He has been behind three successful
startups and now runs an incubation space for upcoming tech-preneurs
in the trendy Mission District of San Francisco. ‘The most important
thing Kenya needs to focus on is the people, don’t put money into
infrastructure or buildings, but invest in young entrepreneurs and
make them feel welcome to start companies,” he answered. Mr Bragiel
admits he started some companies that ‘failed spectacularly but making
entrepreneurship cool is the way to go.

Kenya’s message to the academia and diaspora community at Stanford was
fairly straightforward: We’re here to work with you. “Hopefully we can
create relationships and linkages with Stanford, Berkeley and with any
other so we can deepen research and continue to supply ICT with
relevant talent,” said board Deputy CEO Eunice Kariuki.

Venture capitalists, angel investors and people willing to fund good
ideas built the valley’s ecosystem. Arjun Costa, who scouts
investments in sub-Saharan Africa for social investment outfit Omidyar
Network is a good example. His organisation is an early stage investor
in companies and has funded a few Kenyans including Ushahidi and
FrontlineSMS. “We don’t put in the first dollar but we look for a
proof of concept and some customers so we know that the company can
build a product that somebody will pay for.” His only problem is that
he is not getting enough such companies in Kenya to invest in.

Nonetheless, the level of activity and maturity of ideas by Kenyan
techies impress him whenever he visits. Mbwana Ali is a Tanzanian
immigrant in the US who works with Mr Bragiel’s I/O Ventures.
“Entrepreneurs need to make sure they focus on building their product
well. A lot of people here in the valley start off solving a problem
that they are passionate about, then it grows into a company,” he
says.

Timothy Sturgeon, a senior research affiliate at the equally reputable
Massachussets Institute of Technology is a Silicon Valley insider
having previously been at Berkeley. He has best summarised the
Valley’s credo: “Perhaps the strongest thread that runs through the
Valley’s past and present is the drive to “play” with novel
technology, which, when bolstered by an advanced engineering degree
and channeled by astute management, has done much to create the
industrial powerhouse we see in the Valley today.”

Mr Ali agrees. “It has all the pieces of the ecosystem solved and it
has been done over many years. No one country can jump and become a
Silicon Valley in one goal but there are lots of steps to get there.’
CULLED FROM BUSINESSDAILYAFRICA.COM