Kenya is fast walking away from the path to becoming a Silicon Savanna

President Uhuru Kenyatta with Deputy President William Ruto at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as he left the country to attend the 9th Northern Corridor Infrastructure Summit in Kigali, Rwanda. PHOTO | PSCU 

In Summary

• To improve the odds of creating the next best thing, societies are often advised to get their universities and national laboratories to engage in “blue sky” research whose impacts are not yet obvious.
• It is conceivable that the kind of innovations that would make our reputation as a silicon savannah are in danger of never coming into existence because of this.
• There is another aspect to this — the analytical skills that are obtained in strong academic computing research environments are generally missing from the set of our local graduates.

By MICHEL WAHOME
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If you had not already heard, Kenya is home to the “silicon savannah”, a designation that brings to mind gleaming, futuristic feats of computing and technological wizardry. It suggests kinship with Silicon Valley, the epicentre of commercialisation of information technology.

Scientific research has traditionally been implicated in technological innovation. To improve the odds of creating the next best thing, societies are often advised to get their universities and national laboratories to engage in “blue sky” research whose impacts are not yet obvious.

Actually, because of the nature of IT rather than say, pharma, many billion-dollar companies in Silicon Valley are not exactly reinventing the wheel.

So why invest in academic research if you can get by without it? Anyone who is impressed by the achievements of Google and/or points to Stanford University as one of the reasons for the success of Silicon Valley can make a case for why.

In the long run, industry as a whole benefits from proximity to a source of discovery and advancement in the field.

What is considered standard today was once an earth-shattering find; it is always better to be at the crest of a new wave. Being an area where those preoccupied with advanced computing co-exist with those preoccupied with advanced money-making is why Silicon Valley has the success and reputation that it does today.

This reputation almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, continuing to attract brilliant minds and deep wallets and thus ensuring that it endures.

What of Nairobi? Are we able to substantiate this moniker? Have we leapfrogged, not in technology development but in being assigned catchy names?

Maybe we should have started with “mobile payments savannah” for the sake of accuracy and managing expectations.

The kind of research around computing taking place in Kenya is not necessarily about generating new knowledge. Rather, it is applying existing concepts and methodologies to the local context.

It is conceivable that the kind of innovations that would make our reputation as a silicon savannah are in danger of never coming into existence because of this. Technologies are not neutral, they take on the characteristics of their makers.

For most of us, technology is a “black box”. Rarely do we sit down to ponder what thought, experimentation, and failure went into its development. Who knows how much better suited to us our technology would be if it was developed here, from scratch.

Though it is difficult to imagine infusing a computer language or algorithm with the sounds of matatus, the fear of kanjo, and the aspirations of a jua kali worker, this is inevitably what happens when technologies are thought through and designed in situ.

Tech giants can afford in-house scientists to conduct the research and development that allows them to exist for generations, but everyone else has to depend on pertinent research coming out of academic computer science departments. In Kenya, academically speaking, we are net importers of computing theories and methodologies.

There is another aspect to this — the analytical skills that are obtained in strong academic computing research environments are generally missing from the set of our local graduates.

Computing is notorious for the rapid obsolescence of knowledge; for a programmer to maintain their computing knowledge they must continue to learn.

When our local university graduates get their degree, they are at the point where they are ready to learn, but not much further. So even if they were privy to new findings, they would likely be unable to implement that knowledge.

A laboratory-developed algorithm might be tested once, yet in practical application it might be expected to run 24/7 for years.

For a programmer to derive the most benefit from discoveries in the laboratory, they should be well versed in analysing and understanding the research.

Pushing the academic research envelope would go a long way in cementing our global credibility as a technology Mecca, for if Stanford and Silicon Valley are to be believed, laboratory work often leads to long-term economic development.

The writer is a PhD candidate in science, technology, and innovation at the University of Edinburgh. michiekins@gmail.com.