President Uhuru Kenyatta on Monday, February 8 commended the impact technology had on the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic and continues to have in job creation and delivery of public services.
He spoke at State House, Nairobi during the 2021 Africa Business Forum held virtually on the sidelines of the 34th Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government.
Despite the stringent measures that curbed economic activities brought about by the pandemic, technology safeguarded the running of businesses and enabled international cooperation and engagements. He also observed that digital technologies have enabled both Governments and the private sector to continue operating.
“Currently, the Kenya Government has over 200 digitized services offered through Huduma Centres countrywide as well as an online self-service E-Citizen platform, Both platforms, which are widely utilized, offer one-stop access to essential services such as applying for Passports or National Identification Cards; and registering businesses, births, or deaths, ” he said
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President Kenyatta added that Kenya had made immense progress in the delivery public services digitally and that the country was banking on technology to transform its economy.
“Kenya is also progressively digitising core government services such as filing of tax returns, land registries, court procedures and rulings, and public service records,” the head of state affirmed.
Currently,40 percent of private enterprises in Kenya are engaged in e-commerce and 70 percent of all e-commerce payments in the country are settled through various mobile money payment platforms.
He further highlighted the cost-effective nature of digital technologies in helping African nations to solve the challenge of scarce finances needed to provide infrastructure, institutions and human resources to power economic growth.
The government intends to invest in training and capacity building of service providers and technology users to safeguard digital technologies.
“To ensure technology is embraced, holistically by all business sectors we must contain misuse/abuse of technology. We, therefore, in our training pay particular attention to ethics and values as it is key to sustainable adoption of technology,” the President said.
With highly emerging digital entrepreneurship, the President said the Kenyan Government is working with partners to lower entry barriers for ICT entrepreneurs.
He urged African economies to harmonize their ICT standards In order to accelerate the creation of a common market, so as to achieve inter-operability of their digital infrastructure.
Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa Vera Songwe who also spoke at the virtual meeting commended President Kenyatta for championing usage of ICT in service delivery and called on other African nations to emulate Kenya.
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