Konza City dream: ICT CS Owalo says first locally-made mobile phone to be ready by August

Information Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo says Kenya is on its track to manufacturing mobile phones under the ambitious multi-million-shilling Konza Techno-polis plan in Malili, Machakos County.

As the fate of Konza, which was touted as Africa’s Silicon Savanah ahead of its launch in January 2013, remains unclear ten years later, the CS says the infrastructure is already in place and that local telecoms will be among the first firms to set camp this year.

“The telecoms have realised that in the near future, Kenya must become a manufacturer of phones and cheap technology as opposed to a chief importer, so we are going to start manufacturing, the technology is already there and we are going to roll out this initiative by July,” Owalo said on Tuesday.

Speaking to Citizen TV’s Waihiga Mwaura, the CS noted that they are also looking at software manufacturing, although he did not disclose the major players who will be involved in the sector alongside the local telecommunications providers.

“The infrastructure is already there. The telecom companies will set up their operations there, they are not just going to manufacture telephone equipment, but we are going to start manufacturing ICT software as a country,” said Owalo.

“In the not-too-distant future, Kenya will be a net exporter of technology,” he added.

The first batch of Made-in-Kenya phones, according to the ICT CS, should hit the market latest August, retailing at around 40 US dollars, which should be between Ksh.4,000 and Ksh.5,000.

 “We will not only be able to meet the demands in the local market, we will also have surplus for export,” the CS added.

“The feasibility study has already been done and the market demand has been ascertained, the envisaged cost of production and the profits for the telecoms have also been ascertained.”

"A 4G device is what helps you to have a good user experience in terms of social media and use all these platforms that perhaps you and I are very familiar with," he said speaking to Citizen TV.

"Growing internet penetration is fundamental but there is a barrier which is the low-cost smartphone and the pronouncement by the government is a very important step and will have very strong overall benefits."

With Konza City, the Kenyan government led by then-president Uhuru Kenyatta wanted to replicate Silicon Valley in the United States.

The techno-polis is planned to be a city offering both tax exemptions and holidays to investors towards making the country one of the few global ICT zones in the continent.

The plan was to build the city through four five-year phases, with the government pledging to lay out infrastructure and interested private partners building their facilities.

But as time has gone by, so have its costs gone up. Initially set at a cost of Ksh.850 billion, the project is now estimated to be around worth over Ksh.1.4 trillion.

Konza City’s management has pinned the delays on finance, even as the brains behind the project maintain that the challenge is in handling the project.

Bitange Ndemo, whose office at the time conceived the techno-polis, previously told Citizen TV “Funding for the project has never been an issue. I managed to get Ksh.17.5 billion for the project without any problems. So funding isn’t really the issue.”

“The institution had no idea how to handle Konza. It was complex and it still is. The NLC was saying we should follow the processes of acquiring public land, which would take years to complete,” he said in February 2019.

Among the initial global firms that showed interest at Konza include American tech giant Google, Chinese network and handset maker Huawei.

Already, Google and other giants such as Microsoft and Visa have since set up multi-billion-shilling hubs in the country, but opting instead for the capital Nairobi.

Kenya has in the meantime inked a deal with the Korean government aimed at fast-tracking the actualisation of the Konza City dream.

Dubbed the Economic Innovation Partnership Program, the three-year partnership was signed in March 2022 to provide a framework for the completion of three pivotal projects in Konza Technopolis.