By: Van
Soul Addey
The Government of Kenya is
strengthening its partnership with global technology company Oracle to
accelerate digital transformation, expand digital infrastructure and build a
competitive digital economy, with plans to operationalise the company’s local Cloud
Region in the country.
The development follows a
meeting between Principal Secretary for the State Department for ICT and the
Digital Economy, Eng. John Tanui, and Oracle Africa Vice President for
Technology and Applications, Mr. Andres Garcia, who paid a courtesy call at the
State Department. Oracle Kenya Managing Director and Public Sector Leader for
Africa, Mr. David Bunei, also attended the meeting.
Discussions centred on
aligning Oracle’s technological capabilities with Kenya’s digital
transformation priorities and the Government’s Bottom-Up Economic
Transformation Agenda (BETA), particularly in cloud infrastructure, data
sovereignty, digital skills and innovation.
A key highlight of the
engagement was the planned operationalisation of Oracle’s local Cloud Region in
Kenya, which is expected to strengthen local data hosting, reduce latency and
provide secure and reliable infrastructure for government and private sector
workloads.
The meeting also explored
plans for the official commissioning of the facility and increased adoption of
local data centre services.
On digital skills
development, Oracle outlined plans to train and certify 30,000 Kenyans from
public institutions and universities in critical technology areas, including
cloud computing and cybersecurity.
The discussions further
explored opportunities for collaboration with Konza Technopolis and the use of
platforms such as eCitizen to advance innovation, artificial intelligence
adoption and digital employment opportunities.
Eng. Tanui underscored the
importance of public-private partnerships in mobilising investment, expertise
and technology to advance Kenya’s digital transformation agenda.
