Fiona Asonga, CEO of Technology Service Providers of Kenya (TESPOK), says little is being done to grow local content - apart from the digital learning programme initiated by the ministry of education.
Asonga was speaking at the Optix East Africa conference in Nairobi that brought together fibre optic professionals under the theme optical infrastructure for one African digital economy.
"The content is there. Africa is so rich in terms of the content we can get online. But we are not digitising that content and where we are attempting to, the effort and the standard is so low that it is difficult to appreciate it as digital content," said Asonga. "This is one of the challenges we have had in the digital learning progamme. It is not just about scanning a book, it has to be interactive."
The TESPOK executive added that capacity building in the ICT sector should cover both business skills and technical skills as this will enable startups to sustain their operations.
Asonga urged urged stakeholders to create policy and awareness to drive connectivity.
"We are experiencing an exponential growth in the ICT sector in Kenya, yet there remains a lot of untapped potential. From a global perspective, the next billion to be connected online are in Africa yet our infrastructure development to support the connectivity remains a challenge," she said.
Asonga also advised the ICT ministry to fast-track the implementation of the critical infrastructure protection bill.
"There are concerns of infrastructure protection. We find that infrastructure is destroyed due to ignorance. Service providers have little recourse to the loss they experience when infrastructure is damaged," she said.
She also pushed for the reduction of levies charged on fibre deployment in order to increase access to fast broadband.
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