Thanks to the assistance, Kenya expects to complete its ongoing digital projects within ten years.

Last Thursday, the Kenyan Minister of Digital Economy Eliud Owalo (photo) indicated the country requested the World Bank's financial assistance for the partial implementation of its 100,000-km fiber deployment project.

“With Cabinet approval already in place, we are now set to roll out an initial 5,000 kilometers by June 2023. We are also in talks with the World Bank, through the National Treasury, to secure part of the funding for the digital superhighway, through the Kenya Digital Economy Acceleration Project (KDEAP),” the government official said speaking at the third edition of the digital summit organized by the Nation Media Group in Mombasa. The fiber optic project is part of the 2022-2023 National Digital Master Plan launched in April 2022.

During the digital summit, Eliud Owalo also announced other equally important digital projects, including the implementation of a national identity system by June, the integration of 5,000 government services on the e-citizen portal, and the digitization of the land registry which could potentially unlock 100 million shillings in revenue (about $790,000) from the land sector.

Samira Njoya