gmeltdown

Over the last decade, contribution of Kenya's agriculture sector to the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been below 30% but above 25%. Across East African countries, contribution of Agriculture has been similar to that of Kenya or declining altogether. The chart below shows the trend since 2001 in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. Contribution of Agriculture to national GDP remains significant but sub-optimal Weight of the matters Perhaps there's no need to worry about this trend if it can be seen as a deliberate outcome of economic diversification strategies among individual countries. However agriculture continues to be the mainstay of most East African economies. Agriculture accounts for 61% of total employment in Kenya for instance. Contribution to national employment statistics by agriculture seems even higher among other East African countries as indicated in the chart below. Agriculture contributes to the majority of employment opportunit...

This christmas did not pass without much drama for many Kenyans. Banks had for some days before the holidays sent what looked like panic notifications advising customers to change their ATM card PIN numbers. Although I don't recall being a targeted recipient of the " Change your PIN " plea by my bank, good old twitter amplified the message at some point on 23rd and 24th December. Bank with StanChart? Change your PIN tonight. Not later. Not tomorrow. Your money is only safe under your pilllow for now. — Jackson Biko (@bikozulu) December 23, 2012 As fate would have it, having been unable to scamper for the seemingly account-saving change of PIN, Christmas eve would be the day fraudsters would hit my account. In the resulting helplessness of things, where else to go but good old twitter to share the experience with the rest of the world? Just got my Stanchart ATM PIN stolen/changed and cash withdrawn. People CHANGE your PIN numbers!! — John Kieti (@gmeltdown) De...

Entrepreneurs create new businesses, and new businesses in turn create jobs. New businesses intensify competition for existing larger businesses. Increased competition forces small and large entreprises alike to innovate and be more efficient in creating value for customers. Efficient value creation results in a more productive economy hence economic growth.  Arguably, many large entreprises in East Africa do not face much competition, enough to give research and development the priority place required for innovation to grow. Furthermore, many of the larger entreprises within East Africa are multinationals whose research and development initiatives are controlled by their parent entities abroad. Therefore innovation for such multinationals is more likely to target global markets and not local markets in developing countries where revenue streams are comparatively insignificant. The other significant proportion of large entreprises in East Africa is comprised of parastatals ...

In the last year or so Nairobi has been treated to a multiplicity of competitions and contest organised to promote local technology entrepreneurship. Depending on whether the chicken or the egg came first, one would argue that this has contributed to significant buzz and interest around East Africa’s growing tech start-up culture. That the region is experiencing growth in the tech start-up scene is difficult to dispute. Doubting people only need to consider the tech scene’s coverage from global media houses such as The Next Web ( Mnachi Mdema’s article and Francis Pisani’s artice ), the ReadWriteWeb ( Curt Hopkins article ), BBC ( Egon Cossou’s article ), Forbes.com and CNN ( Dayo Olopade’s article ) - to name a few. Some of the entrepreneur competitions in the last one year that I can barely recall are IPO48 , Garage48 , App Circus , Huawei developer challenge . Some of the contests take a more global scope such as Nokia’s Create for millions Contest , infoDev’s Top ...

East Africa region continues to strengthen its profile as a mobile innovation hub. As mobile developers, entrepreneurs and stakeholders prepare for Pivot East , the regions mobile apps pitching conference in June, a couple of industry related events are happening as well. These events are helping to showcase East Africa as a mobile innovation destination.     This week on 22nd and 23rd February, Nairobi gets to host one of East Africa’s conferences on the mobile web ecosystem. The conference was first held in Nairobi on 3rd and 4th February 2010 and comes back to the City two years later. Much has changed in the last two years and the conference is an opportunity for many to catch up with the state of affairs since mobile phone penetration and  mobile data connectivity began to increase exponentially in the region.  The conference will be at the Southern Sun Mayfair and Kenya ICT board are its official hosts. *iHub_ and m:lab East Africa are officially supp...

During the month of August 2011, one of the many developments in the national Health and ICT scene was the launch of Kenya's National e-Health Strategy 2011-2017. The vision of the strategy is “ To develop efficient, accessible, equitable, secure and consumer friendly health care services enabled by ICT ”. The strategy also outlines a mission to “ promote and deliver efficient healthcare services to Kenyans and consumers beyond our borders, using ICT ”. Hon. Peter Anyang Ngong'o – Kenya's Minister for Medical Services officially launched the strategy on 11th August 2011. Hon. Peter Anyang' Nyongo - Kenya's Minister for Medical Services Calling for a paradigm shift The newly launched strategy seeks to set in motion a process of compensating for the shortage of skilled health care professionals by harnessing ICT for improved healthcare delivery. It also aims to tap into the latent capacity of healthcare consumers to play an active role in the pr...

Mobile Money in Kenya, and East Africa in general has become part and parcel of everyday activities. Often times users of M-Pesa in Kenya are seen complaining about how their mobile money payments (or transfers) did not go through in good time to much their hurry. Sometimes users complain about a complete failure of their attempted transactions. One would think then, "if M-PESA is that unreliable, why not Use alternative mobile money transfer platforms?" The reality is that the alternatives - the likes of Airtel Money, Yucash, Orange Money and Mobikash may not always be better. For instance, the alternatives might imply one driving for a long while looking for an agent to deposit money for the transaction as their agent networks are largely under-developed. Critical minutes of need At a critical moment this evening, I run out of power in my house (still learning to match KPLC pre-payments and usage). So having got used to the convenience of recharging the pre-paid meter acc...