Lack of connectivity hindering e-governance in Kenya – ZTE

“The main concern now for Kenya is connectivity, mainly last mile,” said Hu Xin, chief technology officer (CTO) for ZTE Southern Africa Region.

Among the ZTE solutions designed for the Kenyan government is the ZTE U-Government Solution, an integrated application platform that provides cloud services to make government processes more efficient, integrated and transparent, and which can be implemented in the fields of education, health, safety and public administration.

Also unveiled was the ZTE U-Government Operations & Administration security cloud solution, which offers a professional email system and an internal portal system, as well as HR, finance, information security and asset management systems.

ZTE’s Xiong Ting said Kenya was at an improvement stage when it came to e-governance, cautioning that when it comes to e-governance programmes, lack of top level design would lead to loss of resources, separate systems will culminate in lack of interconnection and information islands resulted in data sharing.

She called for unified networks and databases when it comes to e-government solutions.

Xin said the cost of the rollout of smaller solutions in Kenya will be covered by ZTE while the bigger projects will be undertaken in conjunction with the government.

“We work with governments so that we can make cost savings as much as possible to ensure governments utilises the excess funds in other areas,” he said.

Ministry of ICT secretary of administration Brown Otunga said the government has laid down 20 kilometres of terrestrial fibre cable already and had other projects in the pipeline for wider coverage, among them the 4G network.

“e-governance is part of the bigger Vision 2030, it is the trend and we cannot be left behind,” Otunga told HumanIPO.

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