State breathes new life into digital villages

By Frankline Sunday

Kenya: Kenyans living in rural areas may soon access affordable Internet from Pasha Centres, or digital villages, as the Government moves to revive stalled projects.

The Government has outsourced some of its advisory roles in the project to a private firm that will provide the digital centres with support services, the lack of which was cited as contributing to their failure the first time round.

According to Mr Kwame Shiroya, the official in charge of the digital villages projects at the Kenya ICT Authority (ICTA), the move to revamp the digital villages project (DVP) is in keeping with the recommendations of a report by audit firm Deloitte East Africa, which was contracted to look into the factors that caused their under-performance.

Novel initiative

“ICTA has recruited a business development firm to develop common minimum business standards and ways of operating to enhance efficiency and quality,” he said.

In addition, The Youth Banner, the appointed consultant, will provide a supervisory role to Pasha managers, monitoring how they develop their service offerings and work with other providers.

Launched in 2010 by the former ministry of Information permanent secretary, Dr Bitange Ndemo, DVP was considered a novel initiative that would help bridge the technology divide in the country.

The idea was to have information hubs set up in rural areas where users could access various Internet services, including email, web browsing, Internet calls and IT learning.

The Pasha Centres were supposed to be run by entrepreneurs who were to get subsidised loans from the Government (at 10 per cent interest) through a revolving fund.

The landing of multiple undersea fibre cables was expected to further boost broadband penetration and facilitate Internet connection in rural areas.

Oversimplified

It later emerged that the Government had greatly oversimplified the execution of the project, and four years later, the anticipated benefits to rural residents are yet to be met as most Pasha Centres are unable to break even or even provide their core services.

“Pasha Centres are unable to generate adequate revenues because they have an undiversified portfolio of services,” said Mr Shiroya.

“In addition, the high costs of operations and underutilised equipment limits their financial capacity.”

Others, however, attribute the failure of the DVP to a shaky shared-responsibility formula between entrepreneurs and the Government.

“The Pasha Centres are a very strategic initiative, and they have given some young people opportunities to do good IT-based business,” said Mr Sam Gichuru, the co-founder and CEO of incubation hub Nailab.

“However, the Government also needs to do its part in terms of making it possible for Pasha managers to run their enterprises effectively. This includes the provision of essential services like electricity and broadband connectivity, which is quite capital-intensive and should not be the duty of the entrepreneurs, but the Government.”

A recent study conducted by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) found that 16 per cent and 88 per cent of sub-locations in the country do not have access to voice and data services, respectively.

Access gaps

Some of these areas with access gaps can neither sustain the demand nor supply for IT services, therefore, there is no commercial viability that would prompt service providers to make investments in those regions.

However, there is market sufficiency in some other areas where the demand and supply of IT services can work and investment is viable, but the opportunities are yet to be exploited.

The Government is trying, under the recently released National Broadband Strategy, to facilitate the sealing of these gaps and allow universal access to broadband.

But with the Government unable to finance the more than Sh70 billion required to set up base stations for voice and data services across the country, the digital divide looks set to remain wide, at least in the short and medium term.

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