Kenya launches digital villages project

Nairobi (IT News Africa) —KENYA has launched the Digital Villages Project (DVP) aimed at encouraging new micro-enterprises by providing access to information, education and new markets.

Kenya’s permanent secretary for the Ministry of Information, Communications Technology (ICT), Bitange Ndemo, officiated at the first project, known as Pasha, in Kangundo.

“This is a modest yet important milestone toward implementing the national Pasha Centres that will be sustainable and thrive on the use and development of good -quality content, services and training. The Pilot Pasha Centres are critical to enable valuable field research and testing, incorporating community inputs. The opening of the Kangundo PPC is timely as it coincides with the connectivity landfall of multiple undersea cable initiatives enabling the build-out of broadband infrastructure for
Africa,” he said.

“This is a great opportunity to help in shaping the future of Kenya’s Pasha Centres so that technology can be used to enrich daily life throughout Kenya.”

Pasha means ‘to inform’ in Swahili.

The objective is to establish thousands of such centres across the country, run by local entrepreneurs and attract investment in the development of connectivity and new citizen services. Pasha Centers will
ultimately open up cost-effective access to government and private services for remote farmers and entrepreneurs who would otherwise have to travel extensively to achieve this.

By Brian Adero