Gacimi.com

East Africa may have received the first undersea fibre optic cable a month ago but it is emerging there is no requisite infrastructure to enable Seacom go deeper into the hinterland.

This truly beggars belief, to imagine that the arrival of the undersea fibre optic cable is not something that just happened over-night. We knew for many months that the arrival was imminent so why did someone not plan to have the infrastructure ready in the hinterland to take advantage of the fibre optic cable benefits as soon as the cable landed? Would we be sympathetic to the parents who knew the mother-to-be was pregnant and the baby was due but did not have some nappies, baby clothes, towels etc? 

To have such an infrastructure reaching the destination only to find the required tertiary infrastructure is missing is something that should be raising a heated debate as to what went wrong and what urgent steps should be taken to address it. This happening at a time when there are significant efforts at trying to market countries such as Kenya as a viable location for call centres and technology hubs in preference to countries such as India should not be allowed to happen. Kenya has good English speakers and personnel with very good technical skills IT wise and international companies would be longing to out source the services to such a location. But as a result of poor planning or some sort of short sightedness, this kind of jobs continue to fly past.

East Africans, wake up and smell the coffee!