Kenya today launched an extensive plan to boost Internet speeds and rollout of digital services to remote areas.
The East African leading economy has launched the Sh257 billion National Broadband Strategy, that eyes reliable Internet services by 2017.
The strategy envisages 75 per cent of local business to have online presence, 70 per cent of all government transactions to be virual, 40 per cent of the population to be digitally literate and 20 percent of Kenyan websites to be in local languages.
In the strategy, 5 per cent of national Budget will be geared to ICTs annually, up from the current 0.5 per cent.
Telcoms companies will contribute 0.2 per cent of annual revenues to the Universal Service Fund to implement last-mile connectivity to remote regions.
The government will also establish a broadband venture capital fund to raise sh30 billion and a broadband infrastructure will raise Sh70billion.
“The strategy provides a roadmap to transform Kenya into a knowledge-based society driven by reliable high-capacity nationwide broadband network,” reads the blue print in part.
Thematic areas of the strategy include: Infrastructure, Connectivity and Devices, Content Applications and Innovations, Capacity Building and Awareness, Policy, Legal and Regulatory, Finance and Investment.
The strategy aims to deliver broadband to homes with a minimum speed of 5 megabytes per second and ensure mandatory ICT training for all teachers and primary school level pupils.
According to the strategy, by 2017, National Fibre backbone will be expanded by 30,000 kilometres to reach at least 80 percent of districts.
There is also provision of complementary infrastructure in the roads sector that shall allow ICT infrastructure to cross roads and railways.
The ongoing digitization of government records has also been planned for and by 2017, most government registries will be hosted in a shared network.
“Taxation waivers will be provided by the devolved county governments for way leave fees that have hindered fibre network expansion to remote towns”
