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Is Kenyan African Silicon Valley?

CHRISTINE MUNGAI

Kenya is on the brink of becoming Africa’s ICT hub due to the continued growth in Internet and mobile technology use in East Africa’s biggest economy with investors flooding the country.

The recent Kenya Economic Update report by the World Bank states that over the last decade, ICT has outperformed all others sectors in Kenya, growing at an average of 20 per cent annually.

“The benefits of ICT are starting to be felt in other sectors, and have contributed to the conditions for the country to reach an economic tipping point,” the report says.

The report reveals that Kenya has opened 2011 with renewed and stronger than expected growth on the back of a new constitution, strong macro-economic policies, and a favourable regional environment.

Over the past three decades, Kenya has experienced only two short periods of economic growth that exceeded five per cent and was sustained for at least three consecutive years: 1986-88 and 2004-2007.

This has raised the question: Is Kenya on the verge of experiencing another growth spurt? Will it last longer and go deeper than the previous two episodes?

The World Bank researchers envision that this could indeed be the case, as the uptake of ICT throughout the economy could provide the impetus required for high and sustained growth.

Today, Kenya has the largest mobile money platform in the world. An estimated 15 million mobile phone users were using mobile money by the end of 2010, the equivalent of three out of every four adult Kenyans.

In East Africa, Internet access in recent years has recorded a significant growth.

The World Bank estimates that in 2004, there were 1.65 million active Internet users in the region.

By 2007, the number had increased to 4.78 million, and by 2010 the number of regular users had jumped to 6.78 million, a penetration rate of about 5.1 per cent of the population.

The introduction of data enabled smartphones, which allow internet access through mobile phones has boosted this area hugely.

Kenya’s active Internet usage stands at 8.7 per cent of the population, the highest in the region, compared with Uganda (7.9 per cent), Rwanda (3.1 per cent), Tanzania (1.2 per cent) and Burundi (0.8 per cent).

Paul Odhiambo, CEO of a Nairobi-based ICT consultancy firm, says that creating demand for locally developed software will provide a much needed stimulus for growth of the sector.

“If the government passed similar policy as was passed regarding local content on television—that a certain percentage of ICT solutions in government institutions must be home grown—this will go a long way in developing our local ICT talent.”

Mr Odhiambo says the region needs to develop confidence in its own human sources.

“What we need is to believe in our ability to make this sector really take off, and deliberately create demand for local solutions. We must invest in our own,” he says.

Those that actually need the Internet the most are the very poor people,” says Dr Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary in the Kenya Ministry of Information and Communication.

He believes that the government should step in and make ICT infrastructure an open access platform, just like the road network. “This is the only way prices will come down.”

Last June, Kenya’s telecommunications regulator slashed the licence fee for third-generation (3G) mobile Internet services by 60 percent to $10 million to raise penetration, and announced that it would not charge for an upgrade to 4G.

The wider applications of ICT are starting to reshape the structure of the economy, especially in the financial sector.

In 2010, this sector benefited from a number of innovations, including Equity Bank and Safaricom’s M-Kesho, a joint venture allowing mobile phone users to earn interest on their mobile phone-based savings accounts.

In agriculture, for instance, an SMS platform is used to disseminate information on commodity prices allowing farmers to make better decisions regarding their produce.

The platform also allows disease tracking and consultation to enable communities isolated from healthcare infrastructure to diagnose and treat diseases.

Civil society organisations have also effectively used mobile technology to monitor social unrest and human-rights violations, mobilise voters and disseminate election results, and even track the management of local budgets.

All this is not without challenges. Last December, for instance, a number of fibre optic cables that run around Nairobi were dug up in the middle of the night and severed, causing communication blackouts.

The attacks were blamed by many on digital turf wars between rival firms, keen to seize any advantage in the emerging broadband market.

Others blamed disgruntled employees.

CHRISTINE MUNGAI, The East African

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Africa: Unlocking the Economic Potential of Biotechnology

Jose W. Fernandez

By 2050 population growth is expected to translate into a 70 percent increase in global demand for food. Add the estimated 27 percent decline in global productivity expected due to climate change, and it is clear that the demand for food production will become more critical in the coming decades.

Countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture will be especially vulnerable. Crop models for Sub-Saharan Africa have indicated that in 2050, average rice, wheat, and maize yields will decline by up to 14 percent, 22 percent, and 5 percent, respectively.

But there are rays of hope as we go towards 2050. The potential for agriculture in Africa is great. African countries can use their own experiences, indigenous knowledge and traditional methods, as well as the many talents of their people to adopt and adapt the best of what science has to offer in new technologies.

An essential lever for raising agricultural productivity is increasing investments in science and technology. An important lesson of the 1960s “Green Revolution” was that agricultural research could contribute decisively to spurring agricultural growth. Countries that simultaneously adopted the technology and increased their investments in agricultural research have maintained and even accelerated their rate of productivity and growth. New technologies – like biotechnology, conservation tillage, drip irrigation, integrated pest management, and new multiple-cropping practices – have improved the efficiency and productivity of agricultural resources over the last decade. Around the world some 14 million small and resource poor farmers in the developing world have already benefited from biotechnology crops.

In a 2008 survey of the global impact of biotech crops, the global net economic benefits to biotech crop farmers was $9.2 billion dollars, divided roughly equally between developed and developing countries. In South Africa, for example, biotech maize, soybean, and cotton are estimated to have enhanced farm incomes by $383 million dollars. In other areas of the world, the technology has changed the lives of farmers and raised incomes in a matter of years. In India, conservative estimates for small-scale farmers have indicated that the use of biotech cotton has increased yield by 31 percent, decreased insecticide application by 39 percent, and increased profitability by 88 percent, equivalent to $250 U.S. dollars per hectare. With the advent of enhanced tools, such as drought-resistant corn and disease-resistant bananas, those who have paved the way for the technology will reap even further economic benefits.

African researchers are already working on the next generation of biotech crops that will have a wider array of benefits for farmers, like drought tolerance, nitrogen-use efficiency, and salt tolerance to help address shifting environments due to climate change. But second generation biotech crops will go beyond benefits to the farmer. Work is underway in crops, like cassava and rice, to increase their vitamin, mineral, and protein content, benefitting the consumer as well.

So we know what technology can do. The question is what has been keeping it out of the hands of those who could benefit from it? In many cases misinformation has made people fear a process and its products. However, the real obstacle is the lack of functioning regulatory systems that would allow countries to make their own decisions about the safety of these products. Biotechnology-produced crops have been assessed for safety in all regions of the world – from the European Union to Japan to Brazil to Burkina Faso. Not to adopt biotechnology because of unfounded claims after more than 15 years of safe use and proven benefits would be to unnecessarily narrow an African farmer’s agricultural potential. It is one of the tools, which, when paired with the right incentives, can enable Africa’s farmers and businesses to close the productivity gap.

But those incentives must have political will behind them. Technology alone is not the answer. To make use of the potential of biotechnology, science-based regulatory systems must be established. I call upon those who have the ability to do so to put in place such sound policies, based on science, and to take full advantage of what investment in agricultural science and technology can do for African farmers and economies.

Several African countries have already adopted the policies and regulatory frameworks needed to support the responsible and safe use of biotechnology. I applaud their courage and foresight to move forward. With increased political will, strong research support, and biosafety policies and regulations that empower the use of the technology, African countries can revolutionize their agricultural sector. What’s more, they can squarely look those in the eye who maintain that crop technology leads to lost markets, and ask them to explain why the expanding economies of the world are exactly those that are developing and using biotechnology.

To those who fear monopolies and multinational ownership of the food supply, I say promote competition, don’t stifle innovation. It is clear that economic growth will be achieved by those countries that are innovators in agriculture and that take the leap of faith needed to invest in their farmers, which is an investment in their future.

Mr. Fernandez was nominated by President Obama on August 6, 2009, and sworn in as Assistant Secretary on December 1, 2009. He serves as the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. He leads the Bureau that is responsible for overseeing work on international trade and investment policy; international finance, development, and debt policy; economic sanctions and combating terrorist financing; international energy security policy; international telecommunications and transportation policies; and support for U.S. businesses and the private sector overseas. Mr. Fernandez was named one of the “World’s Leading Lawyers” by Chambers Global for his M&A and corporate expertise, an “Expert” in International Financial Law Review’s “Guide to the World’s Leading Project Finance Lawyers”, and one of the “World’s Leading Privatization Lawyers” by Euromoney Publications.
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The Wrath of Global Warming

Dr. Reese Halter

Conservation biologist

Last week the Republicans in the House of Representatives decided to eliminate a global warming committee created by Democrats. Apparently some politicians continue to deny that human beings are leaving an indelible footprint around the globe.

Vicious hate-mailers which frequent my inbox on the subject of global warming seem also to be in denial, yet a recent survey published in July 2010 in The Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences found that of 1,372 scientists involved in climate research 97 to 98 percent supported anthropogenic (or human-induced) climate change (ACC).

Twenty-four climate models including Japan’s Earth Simulator super-computer predict that if a carbon-cap is not firmly in place by 2020 Earth’s temperature will rise by at least 5.5 degrees F and perhaps as high as 10 degrees F by the end of this century.

And while the delegates for 193 nations meet at the U.N. climate summit in Cancun and argue for who pays for what; this year (2010) will go down as a record year for the amount of coal burned in one year on our planet. It will easily exceed 6.25 billion tons and China’s galloping economy will have contributed at 54 percent of the global emissions.

Each of their coal-fired power plants is consuming 2.2 billion gallons of fresh water and worldwide burning coal is adding as much as 7,500 tons of mercury vapor — a potent neurotoxin — to our stratosphere. It’s winding up in our food chain and drinking water here in America.

Let’s take a look at what Earth’s ecosystems are telling scientists about rising temperatures, acidifying oceans, droughts, intense rainfalls, dying forests and melting ice caps.

Rising temperatures have significantly impacted Hawaii. Surface temperatures are rising, rainfall and stream flow has generally declined, rain intensity has increased, sea level and sea surface temperatures have increased, and the ocean is acidifying.

Around the world jellyfish populations are on the rise as the oceans acidify. Shellfish, on the other hand, like mussels, shrimp, or lobsters are at risk since they will find it considerably more difficult to build their protective shells.

Oceans are naturally alkaline and had a pH level of about 8.2 in 1750. Since the Industrial Revolution, the acidity has increased by 30 percent. Earth’s oceans absorb about 25 percent of the global CO2 emissions. In this process, CO2 is converted into carbonic acid. Rising CO2 levels are unequivocally causing the oceans to become more acidic.

Canada experienced its warmest and driest winter on record. Abnormally dry conditions in British Columbia combined with higher temperatures resulted in poor snow conditions for some events at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler. Winter temperatures on average across the nation were 8 degrees F above normal. Springtime temperatures were also 5 degrees F above average.

Canada experienced the largest spring Arctic sea ice retreat ever recorded as well as registering the largest missing summer sea ice. To experience the warmest winter and spring, back to back, is extraordinary. The year 2010 will go on record as the hottest year ever recorded in Canada.

In Moscow the July mean temperatures were almost 10 degrees F above normal; and the heat wave that gripped the nation killed in excess of 11,000 people in Moscow alone.

Japan and China had their hottest summers ever recorded.

Extreme heat affected northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula during the summer of 2010 with temperatures of 126 degrees F measured in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and 123 degrees F at Doha (Qatar).

After 13 years of being parched the drought in Australia (except for the southwest) broke. Rainfall arrived, farmers rejoiced, grain crops grew and then the rain kept on falling.

A bumper grain crop of 45 tons was predicted. It was the wettest September since the inception of record keeping in the 1850s in Australia. So far at least 15 tons of grain have rotted on the fields. Global grain prices, already at a two-year high after a drought in Russia, have soared again due to persistent rainfall ruining Australian crops and fueling fears of a global shortage.

October was the driest month in Mexico since 1941. November was the driest month in Israel since 1950 and its just suffered the worst-ever forest fire incinerating about 13,000 acres or 60 percent of the Carmel forest, killing 42 people and destroying over 250 homes.

Droughts have been relentless in the Amazon. In 2005 the northwest jungle experienced a one in 100 year drought. In concert with an intense storm 620 miles long by 124 miles wide at least 500 million trees were killed.

Usually the Amazon can absorb about 2 billion tons of CO2 a year. In 2005 the massive die-off of trees released 3 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, therefore an additional 5 billion tons of heat-trapping gases accumulated that year – more than the combined annual emissions of Europe and Japan.

In 2009 extreme flooding occurred in the Amazon jungle.

This year the drought in the northwest Amazon is forecasted to be more lethal than that of 2005. The mighty Negro River — a tributary of the Amazon River — is at its lowest since records began in 1902. Over 60,000 people are now without food and fresh water.

Almost 900 miles southwest of the Negro River over 36,600 fires are alight in the forest over four times the number burning at this time last year.

Unless we reduce our global greenhouse gases around the globe researchers from Carnegie Institution for Sciences predict rising temperatures will alter rainfall in the Amazon by at least 37 percent; many plants and animals now living there with either move but more likely die. Let me remind you that the Amazon accounts for about a fifth of Earth’s annual oxygen output.

Droughts, wild fires and a plague of indigenous bark beetles have leveled the western forests of the United States. Instead of Arizona, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming forests absorbing CO2 they too are now emitters of CO2.

In the last 60 years the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than perhaps any place on Earth. Winter temperatures have soared by 11 degrees F, and 90 percent of the 244 glaciers are in retreat. The ice-dependent Antarctica krill which feeds millions sea birds and marine mammals has declined in some cases by as much as 80 percent.

The natural world is in a tailspin from the speed of rising temperatures; there is no debate about human-induced global warming amongst field scientists working in marine or terrestrial ecosystems. Global warming is a citizen’s issue therefore we all are required to lend a helping hand — the time is now.

Dr Reese Halter is a Science Communicator: Voice for Ecology, conservation biologist at Cal Lutheran and author of Wild Weather – The Truth Behind Global Warming. Contact him through www.DrReese.com

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Africa to Make a “Quantum Leap” Ahead in Forecasting Climate Change

Africa has struggled to make accurate and detailed predictions of the impact of climate change on its countries, but the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) which began earlier in 2010, will see the continent take a “quantum leap” in climate change projection, says Bruce Hewitson, the project’s Africa coordinator.

CORDEX, an initiative by the World Climate Research Programme, will help downscale the global climate model climate change projections being prepared for the next assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) so as to predict, for instance, what impact higher global temperatures might have on Lagos, Nigeria, until the end of this century.
This detailed information will feed into the IPCC’s fifth assessment report, expected to be published in 2013 or 2014.

“The priority area for CORDEX is Africa, as it is historically under-researched,” said Hewitson, who is also the co-lead author of the chapter on regional contexts in the report by IPCC Working Group II, which will look at impact, adaptation and vulnerability.

Projecting the impact of climate change requires studying changes in the long-term averages of daily weather patterns and many other factors, and can be a tricky business.

Scientists use climate models that simulate the possible impact of variables like radiation, moisture content, and the movement of air and temperature over a given period of time to help project what could happen.

To make forecasting the possible effects of climate change as comprehensive as possible, and also make the connection between current events and future consequences clearer, scientists and academics have been expanding the list of variables to include sea level rise and even food price increases and malnutrition statistics.

A climate model works by calculating what the climate is doing, say, in terms of wind, temperature and humidity at a number of points on the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere or ocean, according to an explanation on the website, climateprediction.net. The website is backed by the University of Oxford, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and The Open University, all based in the UK.

“These points are laid out as a grid covering the surface of the Earth, dividing it up into a lot of little boxes. The more boxes there are, the finer the resolution of the model and the smaller-scale climate features it can represent. From this point of view, the best climate model would be the one with the finest resolution.”

Previous climate change models for Africa have typically worked at 200 km resolution – the distance covered by each box in the grid – said Hewitson, who heads the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa.

The target for Africa is to predict climate changes for every 50 km, but some modellers might take it down to even 25 km, said Hewitson.

Fourteen climate modelling groups have already begun work, taking into account climate data from as far back as 1950 and looking beyond into 2100. Because of a lack of capacity in Africa, only two groups – one at UCT, led by Hewitson, and the other being the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa – are based on the continent

Climate models are systems of differential equations based on the basic laws of physics, fluid motion, and chemistry.To “run” a model, scientists divide the planet into a 3-dimensional grid, apply the basic equations, and evaluate the results. Atmospheric models calculate winds, heat transfer, radiation, relative humidity, and surface hydrology within each grid and evaluate interactions with neighboring points
The 12 other groups are led by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, the Danish Meteorological Institute and the University of Iowa, which are among the world’s foremost climate modelling institutions.

The climate data generated by the modelling groups will be processed by regional teams in Afrca led by African scientists, as part of the CORDEX initiative. They will be mentored by top global climate modellers such as Bill Gutowski of Iowa State University, who has been involved in efforts to build a climate research community in Africa for the last decade.

The regional teams will then use the data from the 14 climate modelling groups to develop projections, for instance, of flood frequency in a particular catchment area.

“The focus [of the modeling in Africa] is on areas that are urban, agricultural, water catchments, and other regionally important aspects,” said Hewitson.

The mentors will assist the regional teams in developing projections and writing analyses that will meet the requirement of countries wanting information on the effect of climate change on their food security, health, economic growth and a host of other sectors.

The regional teams will be finalized by the end of 2010 and data processing will start in 2011.

(UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
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Green Revolution Gathers Steam in Kenya

The pressure on the environment from cooking is being blamed for a range of problems, from deforestation to creating gases contributing to global warming. And then there is people’s health: many die in the developing world from the fumes of indoor cooking. Entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists have launched many initiatives around the world to develop fuel-efficient and cleaner burning stoves. But they all share the same challenge: how can they meet local needs and tastes and keep the price of a stove affordable? Here is one example from Kenya of a successful stove and oven business that has become a regional success story.
A Kenyan entrepreneur has cooked up a fuel-efficient stove and oven that uses less of a precious national resource: wood from trees.
Renewable energy solution in Kenya
Most African households using fuel-burning stoves either cannot afford clean-burning fuels like natural gas or electric stoves, or do not have access to them. They are stuck having to burn wood or other materials like animal dung – collectively called biomass – on open fires.
As well as using up wood and contributing to deforestation, there is another downside to these stoves. The use of polluting fuel-burning stoves by half the world’s population – including 80 percent of rural households – is a documented contributor to a host of health problems. Poor households not only have to contend with the ill health effects of dirty water and poor sanitation, the fumes from burning dung, wood, coal or crop leftovers lead to the global deaths of more than 1.6 million people a year from breathing toxic indoor air (WHO).
Two solutions in Kenya are helping people to cook more efficiently (meaning less time wasted on gathering material to burn, and less fuel used) and reducing cooking time by using heat more effectively.
Invented by Dr Maxwell Kinyanjui, the Kinyanjui Jiko is a fuel-efficient charcoal oven that comes in small, medium and large industrial sizes. Made entirely in Kenya, the ovens are custom designed for a variety of environments, from domestic household use and on-the-go safari models to high-capacity models for micro-enterprises and large institutions. Cooks can use the ovens to bake, toast, steam or boil. And they are 40 percent cheaper than cooking with electricity and between 15 and 20 percent cheaper than gas.
Kinyanjui’s Musaki Enterprises Ltd.(www.reskqu.blogspot.com/2009/01/arboretum-project.html) has developed a reputation for pioneering work in developing fuel-efficient stoves and ovens. Its most popular success to date has been the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (jiko is Swahili for cooker), or KCJ, a cheap, simple and effective stove. The company was set up in 1992, but has been involved in international aid-funded research and development efforts since the 1980s.
“My dad was on a very good team of highly motivated individuals in the early 80s who developed the stove through pragmatism, logic and good old-fashioned ingenuity,” said his son, Teddy Kinyanjui. “He then set up the independent Musaki Enterprises.”
The KCJ uses a ceramic liner placed inside a metal container. The metal is usually recycled, often taken from 55 gallon steel drums. The ceramic liner stops the heat energy from simply escaping into the environment and helps to focus the heat on cooking. Simply adding the ceramic liner reduces the stove’s fuel consumption by between 25 and 40 percent. The charcoal or wood sits in the ceramic basin and the burnt ash falls through holes in the bottom of the liner.
The stove design was a result of international and Kenyan cooperation, and has become popular in many African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Senegal and Sudan. It is used in 50 percent of urban homes in Kenya and 16 percent of rural homes.
Musaki Enterprises say the KCJ stoves on average save between 1 and 1.5 tons of CO2 per stove per year compared to other models. In supermarkets, the KCJs retail for around US $5 and the Kinyanjui Jiko ovens start at around US $100.
The deployment of the KCJ stoves has helped in slowing the deforestation of the country, but has not been able to bring it to a halt because of population growth and poor re-forestation efforts, says Teddy Kinyanjui.
“The lack of forward planning in tree planting is making firewood and charcoal harder and harder to obtain,” he said. “Fossil fuels are unavailable or unaffordable. Tree planting must begin now on a huge scale for people to continue cooking.”
Teddy won’t reveal how profitable the KCJ stoves have been, but says, “I wouldn’t have gone to school if they didn’t sell well.”
“Well, more and more people keep buying the damn things as fast as we can make them, so I think our customers like them,” he said. “They really all seem to like that the stoves cook really well for really cheap and are very high quality.”
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