The President of Kenya has just come back from the US where he had a 4-day tour. Glaring headlines capture the seemingly impressive “Bag of Goodies”. Particularly, digital and technology got investment totaling $57.1M (KES 7.44 billion). Kenya is definitely bound to benefit from the trip and the much-needed investment. However, given there are no free rides, most Kenyans are wondering what is the USA getting. A closer look reveals some nuances in the US-Kenya deals.
First, what is missing from the headlines is the fact that some of the deals were announced as far back as a year ago. That is, they are not new, in fact, some of them the proposal submission deadline lapsed last year. Secondly, almost all the funds disbursed mandate that a US firm be contracted for the relevant work. A case of the USA moving money from its left pocket to its right pocket.
The Old US-Kenya Deals Re-announced in Washington
On the fibre backbone and access network expansion announcement, the statement was, “USTDA recently announced funding for a $1.13 million feasibility study to help Bandwidth and Cloud Services Group (BCS) expand its operations to provide new and affordable broadband network access to thousands of individuals across East and Central Africa.” Well, the “recently” here was in 2023, with the proposal submission deadline set as July 28, 2023. Notably, the feasibility study has to be carried out by a US firm.
Similarly, it was announced that the Kenya-based company, Poa Internet, is also a beneficiary of $1.26 million for a feasibility study as well. Again, this submission deadline is June 24, 2023 and US firm has to carry out the study.
$1.3M for a feasibility study for CSquared cross-continent fiber optic backbone is a deal announced and MoU signed in April this year, not in Washington. Yet again this a grant that doesn’t go to a Kenyan company directly.
Notably, CSquared Link Holdings is a company registered in the Mauritius. The company started as a project within Google in 2011. Google joined forces with Mitsui & Co. (Japan), Convergence Partners (South Africa), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) under the World Bank Group back in October 2017. This collaboration resulted in the formation of CSquared as an independent company, co-owned by these four entities.
READ: New Umoja Cable to Establish Direct Digital Link Between Africa and Australia
The Project is to construct a wholesale open access fiber optic network and a series of 5G-capable towers along Kenya’s Meter Gauge Railway is also not a new announcement. In fact, the deadline for proposal submission to earn the paid $1,240,000 grant given to Wilken Group is June 14th. So, hurry, but only if you are a US firm.
The Not So New Data Centre Announcement
Even the 100% geothermal powered data centre is not news. In October the 3rd of 2023 at the Green Energy Park is located at KenGen’s geothermal power generation hub a groundbreaking ceremony was held. At the event attended by 4 Kenyan cabinet secretaries, Ecocloud appeared to be leading the initiative.
Fast forward to March this year, President William Ruto was present in person to witness the MoU signing between Ecocloud and G42. This was the second time the 10 gigawatts of geothermal energy data centre was announced.
The news in Washington was the data centre will run on and provide access to Microsoft Azure through a new East Africa Cloud Region. The were other new items announced in the USA as covered here.
One is the fact that G42 is using its data centres in the US to build a freely available large language AI model that can understand and respond in both Swahili and English. Again, this is another of the US-Kenya deals where the heavy lifting is done by a non-Kenyan company, in fact, executing on its resources located in the US.
USTDA and DFC Just Doing Their Duty to America
Worth noting that the USTDA consistent statement on its press releases partly reads, “The U.S. Trade and Development Agency helps companies create U.S. jobs through the export of U.S. goods and services for priority infrastructure projects in emerging economies.”
So, all in all USTDA is carrying out its mandate. This is the same duty the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is doing for the US citizens. As if to supervise how Kenya will use the funds, DFC announced it plans to open an office in Nairobi.
No doubt, the funds will trickle down directly to Kenyan firms and Kenyan workers. Ideally, in the long term the projects whether new or old are bound to benefit Kenya in its digital drive. As a Kenyan, my hope is the US-Kenya deals actually come to fruition and we are able to take maximum advantage of them.
