An impression of Konza Smart City. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Kenya is set to borrow ideas from a campus in China’s Shenzhen
City to lift Konza Smart City to a technology hub in Africa, officials
have said.
Ms Pamela Tutui, a director at Konza
Technopolis Development Authority (KoTDA) who last week led the agency’s
senior staff in a fact-finding mission to Huawei campus in Shenzhen
City, said the team was making “some good progress” in achieving the
dream. The Huawei campus’s adaptation to technology and
industrialisation has seen its population grow from about 300, 000 to 16
million people in the 40 years, about 90 percent of them youth
entrepreneurs.
The campus alone, standing in a
five-kilometre square land, with meandering rivers, a natural lake and
surrounded by well-conserved hills has employed more than 20, 000
engineers who ensure Huawei remains a competitive telecommunications
firm. “We are encouraged by what we have witnessed at the campus and we
want to get the best technology to develop the city back home,” Ms Tutui
said, adding KoTDA was collaborating with Huawei to develop Konza.
“At
the end of it, we intend to have a smart city, but it entails a lot. We
will have facilities like hotels, housing facilities and office blocks;
it’s going to be a city of the future,” said Ms Tutui.
The
government has allocated Sh10 billion towards the project, but
procurement and other administrative bureaucracies have delayed
programmes.
Mr Dalmar Abdi, communications director at Huawei Technologies
Kenya said the firm had completed installation of modern communication
technologies to actualise the Konza Smart City. “Konza Smart City is
going to be something that we Kenyans and Africans are going to be proud
of. We are talking of a facility to accommodate tens and thousands of
students whose security is a critical component,” said Mr Dalmar.
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