A new e-book – Digital Kenya, An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making – has been released, analysing the East African country’s ICT sector and the entrepreneurs and innovations that have shaped the regional hub.
The e-book has been put together by Kenya’s former permanent secretary for ICT Professor Bitange Ndemo and the Stanford University-based Tim Weiss, and aims to critically assess the cultural, economic and political forces at play in the “Silicon Savannah.”
Across 15 chapters and 14 one-on-one interviews, Digital Kenya asks why establishing ICT startups on a continental and global scale remains a challenge and looks at what powers Kenyan success stories like the iHub, BRCK and M-KOPA Solar.
The chapters and interviews offer insights from leading lights of the sector, including Ndemo himself as well as Omidyar Network’s Ory Okolloh and social media expert Mark Kaigwa.
“Kenya’s ICT sector is booming, with unimaginable potential, producing some of the most disruptive innovations on the continent,” Ndemo said.
“However, entrepreneurs are still faced with significant challenges when it comes to scaling their businesses, and we felt compelled to find out why, by collating insight and analysis from expert voices working in the area.”
He said Digital Kenya documents the Kenyan ICT journey in a bid to spark lively debate and provide a reference point from which investors, academics, students and commentators can make better informed decisions about how they interact with the Kenyan tech ecosystem.