Friday, July 18, 2014

Investment potential of Kenya's education sector

The first thing a visitor to the Fanisi Capital boardroom in Nairobi notices when he walks in is a big black television and, below the television, a picture. It is an interesting one to look at: the people in it – students and teachers, presumably – are of every race, skin and hair colour, all smiling. The lawn in the foreground is lush and well manicured. Palm trees rise above the smiling faces, flanking seven thatched roof peaks. It could be a picture of a “Young United Nations” conference on a tropical island. The only thing that shows it is not the UN is a school crest. Hillcrest Investments Limited (HIL) currently owns the school in the photo, as well as its sister schools on the same campus.
HIL was established in 2011. Its principal shareholders are Kenya-based Fanisi Capital, a US$50-million venture capital fund represented byAyisi Makatiani; and Anthony Wahome, an investor whose principal ventures include the Linksoft Group of companies and the Rose of Sharon Academy. Hillcrest is a source of great pride for Makatiani. His office nametag and keys hang on a Hillcrest-branded lanyard. So how did Makatiani, who built Africa Online, one of Africa’s first Internet service providers, end up owning a school? “It was an opportunistic move for Fanisi,” he says. “The school was put up for sale and we bought it at the cost of land.”

Harnessing ICT for development in Kenya

In the decade since the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (MoICT) was established, the ICT sector has grown from virtually non-existent into an important component of the economy. According to the latest government statistics, for the quarter ended September 2013, mobile and internet penetration rates have reached 76.9% and 47.1%, respectively.
Insufficient infrastructure has been the biggest constraint to continued expansion. To this end, in July 2013 the government launched the National Broadband Strategy (NBS), a joint product of the MoICT and the Communications Commission of Kenya, the sector’s regulator, with an overall objective of providing broadband access to 100% of the population. More than half of its $2.8bn budget is allocated to building infrastructure, with the balance directed towards capacity building and content development.
The proposed funding sources include a broadband infrastructure bond and venture capital fund, in addition to an increasing ICT’s share of the government budget from 0.5% to 5%.
Fred Matiang’i, the cabinet secretary for the MoICT, told OBG the support of the private sector will be necessary to realise the goals of the NBS. “We need to come up with a framework that will facilitate the role of the private sector in the development of digital infrastructure. Given the demand on our labour and financial sources, we will not be able to do this alone,” he said.
Harnessing ICT for development in Kenya




Cloud computing will be a gold mine in the post-COVID era

Companies needed to embrace change as the COVID-19 pandemic brought new challenges and continues to have a multi-sector impact on nations, b...