Kenya has begun construction on the new city of Konza -- the so-called "Silicon Savannah" -- as it seeks to cement its position as one of the main centres of Africa's technology sector.
Located 64km south of Nairobi, the £9.1bn city will turn what is currently empty savannah into 20.1km2 mixed-use city that the Kenyan government claims will eventually generate as many as 200,000 jobs by the time its final construction phase is finished in 2030. Tax breaks are being offered to companies willing to invest in moving to the new city.
The site is currently occupied only by a highway, around which the city will grow in a triangular shape. There will be 35,000 homes, schools for all ages and a new university, all designed so that residents can easily get to the two business parks by public transport, walking or cycling. The plan is apparently heavily-influenced by similar "new cities", like Cyberjaya in Malaysia, Cyber Cityin Mauritius and Egypt's Smart Village. Wired.co.uk reported on Chengdu's similar " Great City" plan last year.
While Konza's development is being split into four phases to spread the cost (with the first phase set for completion by 2017), the overall plan is extremely ambitious -- it's not just seen as a way of attracting investment from international tech companies and inspiring domestic entrepreneurs, but also as a way of reducing the corruption that has been endemic in the nation for several decades.
Konza forms a key part of what the Kenyan governman has dubbed "Vision 2030", the long term economic plan that followed the introduction of a new constitution in 2010. Previously, government officials could take advantage of their power to secure public resources for their own ethnic blocks around the country, a situation which eventually fed into the political crisis of 2007. Konza -- economically and politically a completely new entity -- can, it is perhaps optimistically hoped, be something of a role model for the rest of the country, while the improvements in infrastructure will be felt by people around the country as high-speed rail links and highway iprovements are also included in the plan.
However, Kenya has already done quite well with developing its own technology sector, and in recent years has emerged as something of a regional leader. IBM chose Nairobi as the site of its first African research lab in 2012, and major companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel have their regional headquarters in the country.
Kenyan startups -- like the M-Farm, which keeps farmers up to date with the latest agriculture prices -- are often huge successes domestically, and tech incubators like iHub are springing up throughout Nairobi to help entrepreneurs get started. It also helps that the average internet speeds in eastern Africa arehigher than in South Africa, Kenya's main rival in the tech sector. And, of course, the revolution that mobile phones have brought to the entire continent are well-reported by now.
While the plan is for Konza to be the Kenyan answer to Silicon Valley, it will literally be on the savannah, so a large green belt-like buffer zone is being planned to ensure grazing animals like elephants and wildebeests continue to have enough land to roam and feed on.
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