John Paul Okwiri, or JP as his friends call him, wants to build a city from scratch, no mean feat. As the CEO of Konza Technopolis Development Authority (Kotda), Okwiri, will oversea the growth of a master-planned city on 5,000-acre land that straddles the three counties of Machackos, Makueni and Kajiado.
But until then, he has to fight off a euphoric sense of cynicism, with some Kenyans dismissing the futuristic technology hub as yet another Disneyland-like fable, a white elephant.
But Okwiri begs to disagree, noting that just like the medieval Rome which was not built in a day, they are building this city, and many others around the country, brick by brick. It might even take decades.
What is important, he says, is that they have laid the foundation, and a city has gradually been taking shape.
One of the best indicators of viability of a project is attraction of speculators, including on land purchases.
That excitement that the futuristic smart city would lead to appreciation of land prices led to increased purchase of land. But that died down as people realized the city is not a reality. Has there been a re-awakening?
That re-awakening is there. And it is more serious than the one that was there in 2008 up to 2014. Because of two things. One, this project when it was at its peak under construction, it has impacted the local centres.
If you look at Malili, it is almost a township or a town. If you look at Machackos Junction, it is almost a town. If you go to Machackos town, you will see the kind of improvement that has happened there given the impact of this project. Most of the people who work here live in Malili, Machackos and Junction. All those areas have already improved from the way it is.
In fact, when we came here, there was no house in Malili. Now, when you go round, you will a lot of flats that have been built.
Then for the local investors speculating on the land, if you walk out of the gate, someone has already faced and given a name to a resort.
That was done recently. In fact, that area nobody was even touching. Now, people are preparing for what is coming to Konza. Between here and Machackos, there is a lot of construction going on.
The current CS for ICT William Kabogo might have spoken for a lot of Kenyans when he told MPs that there is no investment happening in Kenya. Why isn’t Konza attracting investors?
When the Minister came here, he was surprised at what we had done. We are developing a smart city from scratch, from greenfield. Not so many cities have the opportunities to be built from scratch.
We had the privilege of doing that. That meant a lot of work had to be done as far as planning is concerned.
Why then has it taken so long for Kenyans to start seeing the city since it conception by the Mwai Kibaki in 2008?
Now, if Konza technpolis was initiated in 2008, there was some work that were done in terms of documentation and developing the concept. concept.
Kotda was gazetted in 2012, and then the first institution was in 2014, that is when Kotda got an acting CEO and the board.
And that now meant now the board had the mandate to begin work.
And that is when the contract was signed with the Master delivery partner, a consortium that was led by Tetra Tech. They are the ones who helped develop the Konza plan. They had to provision for how roads would look like.
The initial phase involved developing a lot of guidelines on how to plan for a road, how to plan for a sewer, water, internet, everything including the proposed tenants of the technopolis. That was between 2014 and 2016.
Next was the resource mobilisation phase because whatever the plan they had given was very expensive.
What the government had provisioned through the exchequer is about Sh1 billion, Sh500 million current and Sh500 million development.
To build the infrastructure, required about Sh80 billion. If we only went through the Treasury, we could not even have achieved it by now.
The board and leadership had to look for alternative source of financing. PPP was also not alternative. We were also in a lot of pressure.
This thing you hear about white elephant, it began there. Because what was marketed when Kibaki launched was a futuristic model of a scene, and Kenyans were really excited about it.
What have been achieved so far?
Konza Technopolis is concentrating on having a research-only university. That is why KAIST (Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is there.
It focusses on courses on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). And it is a graduate-only university, no undergraduate. Only for those who want to do Masters and Phd.
They will provide a linkage for the government, the academia and the industry. So, what does this mean? If you look at our industries, our SMEs, they don’t scale up You find some of our SMEs are mostly consumers of external technologies.
So, if you are an ICT company, you will find yourself being a vendor of Microsoft products. But KAIST now, enables you as an innovator to come and develop your own product that can be commercialized. That means that we will have more intellectual properties being commercialised.
And if we have more our own technologies or our own products or innovations, when we commercialize them, you get more revenue than if you are a consumer of Microsoft products.
What are some of the other tenants that have already set camp here?
KAIST is just one of our anchor tenants. Another anchor tenant that was established by the consultant is the national data center. For you to thrive in research and development, you need storage.
You need an environment that can enhance what you are doing with innovation. If you are a startup, you will need more of storage, you know.
So that's why we have a national data center, which is a state of the art. By the way, you not find any other data center in Kenya with that kind of certification.
Another anchor tenant is Digital Media City. The Korean government having financed KAIST and seeing the project now fully done, they have been kind enough to finance another project called Digital Media City.
This one will focus on creative industries. So, the media, the film industry, the content creators, software development factory, fashion…all the creatives. It will be a plug and play environment.
For example, in media. There is no reason why media houses should own infrastructure, like equipment.
And you know equipment keep changing. This Digital Media City will provide that environment so that you as a media personality, you focus on communication and information. So that if you need an equipment or studio you just come.
