DIANI – The Connected East Africa Summit kicked off today at Leisure Lodge Golf & Resort in Diani, Kwale County. The first day featured a golf challenge at the hotel’s golf course, which served as curtain raiser to the three day event.
The 2015 theme is “The strength is in our networks”. This Connected East Africa will discuss how the region can leverage on ICT for full realisation of the benefits of the Customs Union (2005) and Common Market (2010) protocols by its’ regional citizens.
“ICT plays a major role in the economic, political, social and cultural development of our country. Technology has increased efficiency, transparency and is cutting costs whether in start-ups, Multi-nationals or government. We are now widening the market to cover more than 150,000 million residents in the region,” Mr Victor Kyalo, ICT Authority Chief Executive Officer, said.
Mr Kyalo, added that integration will be an answer to the region growing economies that get caught up between investing in basic amenities for the citizens or to marshal funds for ICT infrastructure. Often, because of pressing needs for limited resources, ICT is pushed to the back banner. To answer to the integration theme, the summit has set four objectives for deliberation namely:
• To address gaps in ICT integration and shared infrastructure among the East African Member states.
• To speed-up harmonisation of ICT regulation across the region
• To build support on ongoing ICT integrated infrastructure projects across the East African region.
• To provide a platform for meaningful networking that will result in fruitful relationships that contribute to the economic development of the East African region.
This year’s summit will explore ICT integration of the various information technology platforms that can enable the flow of goods, services and content within the region securely. The building blocks of these discussions have been identified as shared infrastructure, skills development, harnessing Innovation and Information Security.
This year’s title sponsor is Microsoft Corporation. Others sponsors are SEACOM, Dimension Data, Huawei, Konza Techno City, HP and Liquid Telkom. Running for seven years now, the summit offers a platform in which top ICT executives from government, academia and private sector share and exchange ideas on how to use ICT as a catalyst to service delivery to citizens.
Participants are drawn from five East African States namely; Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda.
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