THE ICT LANDSCAPE IN KENYA

KENYA : ICT GEOGRAPHICS

Urban areas in the country, especially major towns, enjoy better ICT access compared to the rural areas. This is due to the more developed ICT infrastructure support that the urban areas have. Adequate infrastructural services such as electricity, telecommunication and good road networks serve as key indicators of ICT investments. Nairobi ,for example, enjoys wide coverage of ICT for computing and telecommunications services. The same applies for other urban centers. The rural areas are critically underserved thereby hampering ICT use and access in creating an e-society in the country. Most fixed phone lines, which are normally required for internet connections, are found in the cities and towns While 80% of the population lives in the rural areas, there lacks a network to connect the rural and urban areas, so that ICT facilities are concentrated in large cities and not spread out evenly.

The vast majority of Kenyans cannot afford to have the internet in their homes. Entrepreneurs have opened internet service shops, popularly known as internet or cyber cafes, in all major towns. Customers are charged by the minute, and the price has fallen rapidly over the years. By the time of writing this report, most cafes in the Central Business Districts of major towns charged 1 Kenya Shilling per minute for access to the internet. 1 Kenya is roughly equivalent to USD 0.42. Some charged as low as 0.5 Kenya Shilling per minute, but the speed was lower.

The print and electronic media services have also witnessed rapid market developments. Access to radio, television, newspapers, telephones and computers, has increased significantly over the years. It is anticipated that this upward trend will continue in the future. It is currently estimated that 68.1 per cent have radios and 3.14 per cent have television receivers respectively. It is also expected that teledensity in the rural areas will have reached 4 per cent by 2015 while in urban areas it will have improved to 20 per cent.