Deloitte report ranks Kenya high in infrastructure projects
Kenya continues to lead the region in terms of infrastructure development with 20 roads, energy, harbors,water and energy projects. Ethiopia comes second with 12 projects according to a report compiled by consultancy Deloitte.
Large mega projects for the last three years occupied up to 20 per cent of all the total capital investment in Africa with a cumulative worth of US$568 billion, a big chuck of it coming from financiers and foreign aid such as the World Bank and even China.
Kenya: Cisco & Seacom unveil start-up hub in Mombasa
Cisco Systems, Seacom, and the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) have partnered to create a technology hub in Mombasa. The hub, which has been named SwahiliPOT, has been created to target software developers from universities based in the coastal town.
The report reveals that MNK has donated office space, while SEACOM is preparing to provide 40 MB of its high-speed Internet service for free. Cisco, according to the report, is providing computing hardware. Despite being a landing station for undersea fibre optic cables from Seacom, TEAMs, Eassy and Lion, Mombasa town has no start-up technology hub.
E-commerce gains traction in rural Kenya
Kenya's rural population is increasingly taking to the internet and aggressively placing orders online catching up with their urban counterparts, an internal survey by Jumia Kenya has revealed.
According to the survey, which was revealed by the company, of the over 3,000,000 web visits sampled, urban traffic to the Jumia site stood at 77% in 2014 with rural traffic at 23% while urban deliveries accounted for 61% and rural 39%. In 2015, urban traffic maintained lead at 60% as rural traffic recorded a 17% rise to stand at 40%. Urban deliveries receded by 6% to 55% compared to 61% the previous year with rural deliveries climbing to 45%.
Washington To Help Kenya Raise $18 Billion For Oil Pipeline
The U.S. government says it will help Kenya get the financing it needs to build an $18 billion pipeline from the oil fields in the country's northwest to its southeastern Indian Ocean coast to help it become a net exporter of oil.
The pipeline would stretch nearly 500 miles from Lokichar in Kenya's Great Rift Valley to the coastal town of Lamu, and would be an almost impossibly expensive project for the East African nation. Yet there is enough oil there to make the plan worthwhile. The pan-African financial institution Ecobank Transnational Inc. says it has proven reserves of about 1 billion barrels of crude oil.
