This archive report was first published on 7 August 2019.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019, marked a significant milestone in Kenya's journey towards harnessing the power of emerging technologies. The Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communications, Joseph Mucheru, launched the Distributed Ledgers and Artificial Intelligence report, detailing how the country can leverage these technologies to solve some of its major problems.
The report highlights the potential of blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in addressing endemic corruption, weak democratic and electoral processes, ballooning national debt, exclusive financial systems, expensive transaction costs, and poor public service delivery.
For instance, blockchain technology can be used to minimize corruption by making transactions transparent and traceable. The Scandinavian countries have already built blockchain-powered land registries to eliminate tax evasion, while Ghana, Georgia, and Ukraine have also adopted similar systems.
Kenya can also leverage these technologies to minimize controversies in its elections. By 2022, the country aims to use blockchain to manage the elections of Members of County Assemblies (MCAs), creating ledgers for all political parties, observers, and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission.
Furthermore, digital asset frameworks can help mobilize local resources and reduce foreign borrowing. The construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi expressway, for example, could be crowdsourced from Kenyans contributing as little as Sh100.
With emerging technologies, Kenya can also lower exorbitant interest rates on mobile borrowing. Facebook's Libra is already promising free transaction costs, targeting the bottom of the pyramid, and other mobile money providers are expected to follow suit.
However, to fully take advantage of these technologies, the government must embark on digitization of records, develop data analytics capability, build a robust biometric identity system, and ensure affordable broadband throughout the country.
