The government will roll out 100,000 kilometres of fibre internet connection all over the country, the ICT Cabinet Secretary has said.
Speaking during the launch of Konza skills laboratory, CS Eliud Owalo said digital skilling was a key thematic area under the government's digital superhighway.
“We will connect internet to schools, markets and all public institutions at the villages. We have a target of 25,000 of such Wifi hotspots.”
A total of 490,000 youth have been trained over the past one year.
He said the President has instructed the Ministry of Information Communication Technology to set up a digital hub in every ward in the country, where youth will be trained on ICT skills.
Owalo said instead of digging to lay underground cables, Kenya Power electricity transmission lines will be used to take fibre connectivity countrywide.
“So we are moving away from institutions of higher learning going down right to the villages so that we can empower our boys and girls by way of digital skilling, but most importantly to also connect them to global technological companies so that they can get digital jobs.”
He added that the Open University, which was opened by the President last year, ensured students did not have to be physically confined to the four walls of a classroom to pursue higher education.
“This will drastically help us reduce the cost of education as we want to make education affordable under the current government to facilitate inclusivity in pursuit of higher education.
The online university is domiciled at the Konza technopolis.
Additionally, a total of 139,000 digital jobs have been created through the ministry of ICT.
This was transformational, he said, because in the near future the country should be able to leverage on technology to sort out unemployment challenges.
The government has ensured that almost all its services were enabled on digital platforms.
When the current regime took over, there were only 350 services on the e-Citizen platform, but today, the William Ruto led government has digitised a whopping 16,892 services.
“Since we embarked on this process when the Kenya Kwanza government came into being, we have today managed to set up these digital hubs in a total of 203 institutions. We have also deployed a total of about 13,000 digital devices to various institutions in the country,” Owalo said.
“The net effect now is that all Kenyans will now be able to consume government services from the comfort of where they are without having to physically visit government offices.”
The launch, which was held at Butere Girls National School in Kakamega, was also attended by First Lady Rachel Ruto.
