Kenyans living in rural areas could soon gain access to e-services after the country secured a $71 million loan from China to support the National Optic Fibre Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI) and e-government expansion project.
The NOFBI project will include the construction of fibre optic links to connect the Larger Area Network (LAN) of 36 administrative district centres across the country with the national fibre optic, allowing people in remote
areas to access faster internet.
“The funds will connect Nairobi with former provincial headquarters that will provide a safer and faster mode of information transmission between the government and the citizens,” said Ministry of Finance permanent secretary, Joseph Kinyua.
Kinyua said the government would continue to implement e-services such as e-health and e-education to ensure efficiency in service delivery.
According to a report by the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), as of June 2011, less than 5% people living in rural areas had access to the internet despite the number of internet users rising to 10 million.
Out of the total 7149 sub-locations in the country, only 893 have access to broadband internet services with a total of 85 000 broadband subscribers.
“The project will create more transparency and bring e-services to all Kenyan people. And I want to assure the Kenyan government that we will be part of this to the end," said China's vice-minister for commerce Chen Jian.
Kenya and China will sign a formal agreement to facilitate the loan at the end of July 2012.
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