Attended by top government and private sector officials, the Inaugural Forum hosted at Konza Technopolis showcased Kenya’s knowledge economy and laid out plans to grow the country’s reputation as Africa’s Silicon Savannah. The forum and STEM Bootcamp held in partnership with KCB Bank Kenya, Safaricom Plc, Huawei Technologies, Machakos University and Meru University to spur an innovation ecosystem with a focus on three key clusters namely ICT & Information Technology Enabled Services (ICT/ITES), Life Sciences and engineering. “Innovation is an instrumental pillar in Konza Technopolis’ core mandate. Indeed, our focus areas in the innovation ecosystem are guided by direct investment in technology, smart urban planning and building a knowledge-intensive environment for stakeholders and the community,” said Eng. John Tanui, Chief Executive Officer, KoTDA. Adding that: “Expanding opportunities so that children can reach their full potential in “tech” adoption is not only a “right” thing to do, but also makes good economic sense hence the STEM Bootcamp. Promoting the cognitive capital of children by finding new solutions to the barriers they face is an important contribution to the long term economic growth of any country.” The forum targets stakeholders in the government and private sector and will cast spotlight on innovation challenges in the country to address the innovation related issues that we face as a country and find solutions to tackle them. The forum will then be followed with a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Bootcamp for potential innovators under 15 years of age. Over 30 children from Machakos, Makueni and Kajiado County took part in the challenge on robotics concepts and elementary programming principles; fostering them to apply critical thinking skills and encourage collaboration in tackling assigned challenges and projects. The initiative targets players active in the start-up community and private sector to showcase Konza Technopolis progress towards the vision of becoming Africa’s Silicon Savannah and discuss the major hurdles harboring growth and scaling up of innovation space in Kenya. A
