AccessKenya banks on customer care for growth

By Fredrick Obura

AccessKenya has said it would rely on its newly acquired IT department and improved customer care services to popularise Sh5 million investments in data hosting business.

The company said it was confident that the highly skilled information technology labour would offer value addition to spice up the data hosting business, an area of growth that has attracted both Internet and non-internet companies including the Government.

Equity Bank, South Africa’s Business Connexion and the government plan to build and lease data storage space.

Equity bank, a non-internet Company announced it would lease out more than 90 per cent of its Sh8 billion data centre.

Appropriate position

The bank, which uses only eight per cent of the level four data centre, also said it, would outsource its management.

The setting up and subsequent leasing of data centres by non-technology companies brings another dimension to competition in the ICT firms sector.

"We have a lot of respect for our competition, and we are watching them closely how they come into the market," said Jonathan Somen, CEO AccessKenya.

"We own both fiber and wireless networks, we are the ISP, and I believe we have the necessary IT expertise," he said.

Mr Somen said the value puts the company at appropriate position to battle it out with other companies in the lucrative data storage business.

Meanwhile, over-reliance on grants, limited budget allocation by Government, and brain drain continues to undermine growth in the Information, Communication, and Technology sector.

Promote development

Convening in Nairobi last week, delegates attending the ICT research capacity in Africa conference called for change in focus to research programmes and support to universities by Government to promote development in ICT.

Prof Lucy Irungu, the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Nairobi said negligence in research had resulted into migration of African scholars to western countries.

"Our Governments are paying little attention to research in general and ICT in particular, these has stagnated growth in the industry," she said.

"We need to restructure our focus to avert scenario of local research agenda being entirely driven by the North who provide the bulk of the funding," she said.