@Mkeiy...Entrepreneurship and innovation is being talked about continually in Kenya. This isn’t some small-time effort.They’ve been thinking hard and smart about the lessons to be learned not only from Silicon Valley, but with only 40 million people, they are also looking for lessons from other small innovation clusters such as Israel, Singapore and Finland. These countries are great models of countries too small to sustain startups of scale on just domestic consumption yet have managed to create innovation with a global reach.

However that said for a country so focused on innovation and startups the lack of venture capitalists is easily noticeable. Given the interesting things being talked about,one would have thought the place would have been crawling with VC’s fighting over deals. Instead it feels like the government – through ICT BOARD - is doing most of the risk capital investing. Given that great VC’s are much, much more than just a bag of money, this means that startups will lack experienced board members with practical experience. There also seems to be very few stakeholders on-board who know/willing to coach entrepreneurs and to build companies.Lastly there seems to be few tools, techniques and strategies to do so.

Point to note there’s confusion in both the Government about the difference between small business entrepreneurship (startups designed to be family businesses,) scalable startup entrepreneurship (startups designed from day one to scale big inside Kenya and then expand globally) and corporate entrepreneurship

These three types of entrepreneurship need to be explicitly recognized, encouraged and managed

My sense is that Kenya has not yet “declared a major.” Saying that you support entrepreneurship and innovation is a start, but the sentence needs to be finished. Entrepreneurship and innovation in what field? Where will Kenya establish technical and innovative leadership? Is the only way they will attract talent by paying entrepreneurs to come to the country? Or will students and entrepreneurs come to Kenya because it is one of the best places in the world for innovation in certain specific industries (pick your favorite – alternative energy? materials science? food science? cellulose outputs? video games and film? East African web commerce hub? automated mining? UAV’s? etc.)

I think what seems to be missing is a stated goal for Kenya to become a magnet for talent in specific domains. Why will people from East Africa and indeed rest of Africa stream to Kenya, besides its magnificent geography and wild Animals, In what fields will Kenya's universities and entrepreneurial culture create such an irresistible pull?

However, i can point out the elements that made Silicon valley successful, and point out the ones that may be helpful in Kenya; the role of Universities and defense-driven university R&D, the rise of venture capital, a failure-tolerant culture and the emerging science of entrepreneurial education.

So there you go to summarise this, the tech city should be a means to and end not an end itself, we lack glaringly on so many aspects mentioned above and dare i say this, it's about time we stopped focusing on this white elephant projects and start by first feeding our people.

And by the way do you know, the PALM DXB is sinking, do you know due to the huge costs the burj incurred in building and running it will never make money...is this the route you want us to go down to...stay away from the mirage that is Dubai..stay well away.



This info is pro-bono my friend!!

...The best way Govt. should do is try the Kitengela EPZ route-create an 'EPZ' kind of atmosphere with leased land,zero taxes and add ICT attractive features e.g ICT University,cable internet, ICT Gadget Manufacturers just like they do in EPZ.
What i can see with the current marketing is a good and effective method to sell real estate whereby the only winner is the land owner.