Kenya takes over regional software market

Kenyan developers earlier this month bagged top honours in two separate competitions, an occurrence that cemented the country’s strength in the field of software development.

Kenyan applications trounced those from across the region to take top positions in the regional Zambezi Prize competition and Village Capital’s FinTech for Agriculture 2015.

Both competitions drew hundreds of participants from East, Central and Southern Africa, and showcased the best in mobile apps in the financial, agricultural and transport sectors.

Kenya’s Umati Capital received $100,000 (Sh10.1 million) as the overall winner of the Zambezi prize, a competition that had Kenyan apps taking up six of the 11 finalist positions. They included Chamasoft, Pluspeople, Agrilife, M-Changa and F3 Life.

Across town at an awards ceremony being held almost simultaneously at Village Capital’s FinTech for Agriculture, Kenyan apps again dominated the list of finalists.

Although the top prize went to Rwanda and Ghana, five of the 10 finalists were from Kenya, with cloud-based financial management portal Chamasoft again making the cut.

Social impact

These were the latest in a slew of competitions and conferences that have given Kenyan app developers the opportunity to assert their authority, with industry players calling on the country to capitalise on these solutions to drive economic growth.

“Many financial service providers have been slow to develop appropriate products and services that include marginalised groups,” said Elizabeth Henry, a director at the Legatum Center, which organised the Zambezi Prize.

“Innovative ideas such as these [showcased] have the potential to grow to scale, and more importantly, have a deep, social impact throughout sub-Saharan Africa.”

Kenya’s start-up community — which became popular four years ago with the proliferation of co-working spaces, such as Nailab, GrowthHub and iHub — is now getting support from the country’s highest office.

President Uhuru Kenyatta earlier this year launched Enterprise Kenya, an initiative to anchor Kenyan start-ups through their growth phase to ensure failure rates — which are pegged at around 90 per cent — are brought down.

Enterprise Kenya is a unique partnership between the public and private sectors and will eventually see, among other things, the public buying up shares of start-ups at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).

Private sector efforts are also focused on helping entrepreneurs thrive. For instance, Village Capital is an initiative that trains and invests in early-stage ventures tackling major social problems by providing them with profitable business solutions.

The initiative, sponsored by the DOEN Foundation, MasterCard Foundation and Duncan Goldie-Scot, brings investors together with start-ups in agriculture, energy, education, health and financial inclusion.

“We are really excited about the positive impact our entrepreneurs can have on improving the incomes of smallholder farmers, and are eager to see our enterprises grow through communities across the continent,” said Village’s executive director, Ross Baird.

“One of the main reasons we support Village Capital is because of its unique peer selection technique. As a result, the organisation is able to create a pipeline of investments at a much lower cost than other parties, and at the same time offer its participants an interesting network,” added Nina Tellegen, CEO of the DOEN Foundation.

Ambitious milestones

The Government is working on having Kenya’s ICT sector become a standalone economic industry by 2017, create 180,000 jobs and contribute 8 per cent of the value of the goods and services produced in the country.

According to ICT Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i, the country is making progress towards realising these ambitious milestones, and local start-ups, which form a big part of the ICT ecosystem, will be helped to register more growth.

“Through initiatives like the iTax portal, Huduma Centres, the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) and the e-Citizen portal, the Government has committed to incorporate ICT in its service delivery,” he said.

Dr Matiang’i added that by the end of the next financial year, more than 60 per cent of public sector services will be delivered electronically, which will provide massive opportunities for software developers and start-ups to create third-party and support apps.

“The Government is committed to the development of the ICT sector, and we want to build on the impressive 13.4 per cent growth we recorded last year to 15 per cent this year and approach the 20 per cent mark by 2017,” he said.

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