Tag Archive for 'Tandaa'

Kenya ICT Board Announces Private Sector Digital Content (Tandaa) Grant Winners.

I was meant to attend the Kenya ICT Board’s Dinner last week on the 30th September 2010 where they we’re to unveil the private sector digital content grant winners but I was really tired so could not make it. However, and this is something I had planned to blog about but I finally got my hands on the list of winners through the Kenya ICT Board web site this evening.

I must admit that the list included a good number of companies and organizations that are known to me including a client who asked for out help to bid for the same recently. I am actually kicking myself now for NOT making an application for a grant since from what I can tell its really good ideas that won the awards in general for both rounds (and I tend to have lots of them, or at least I think I do!).

In particular, Ask A Doc who are a Dotsavvy client (and will be partnering with them on this project) won an award for their grant application to offer a mobile-based medical information solutions (Congratulations Mwirigi Kinagwi and team!). Other winners included the likes of KenyaBuzz who are well known for their web site and e-newsletters that feature entertainment news that is regularly updated – they plan to “mobilize” their offerings and therefore reach a wider consumer market for their content.

For the full list and more details from the Kenya ICT Board web site, go here>

Kenya ICT Board’s (Tandaa) Local Content Grants Statistics.

NOTE: The statistics and review results for this blog post have been taken from publicly available information currently being circulated by the Tandaa initiative of the Kenya ICT Board.

As reported on this blog over 2 months ago, The Kenya ICT Board though its local content initiative dubbed “Tandaa” issued a call for proposals from Kenyan firms and software application developers for grants to support local content and software applications.

The proposals submitted for grants are currently being reviewed by the Tandaa team at Kenya ICT Board after applications closed. They recorded a total of 2,154 applications on their online system. Of these, 667 were complete and submitted within the deadline.  With the support of the Tandaa Team at Kenya ICT Board, an independent consultant is now reviewing and grading these 667 proposals.

Given the large number of grants received, the board had had to push the announcement date for successful proposals from the 15th August 2010 to the 31st August 2010. A full report will be submitted to an independent Grants Committee in mid-August 2010. The Committee will then make the final decision and select the successful grantees. Grantees will be announced on the 31st August 2010.

The day after the grants deadline, Kenya ICT Board’s Tandaa Team will send out an evaluation form to get feedback from everyone who had participated in the grant process. Below are some highlights from the evaluation and statistics on the grant process:

  • Total numbers of approved applications we’re split between 103 females and 608 males. Barely 15% of applicants were women.
  • Overall, participants were satisfied with the grant application process with 39.2% indicating they were ‘very satisfied’ and 38.4% ‘satisfied’.
  • Of respondents that did not complete the grant application process, 64% cited ‘lack of supporting documents’ as the leading cause for non-completion, while 7.4% cited ‘lack of internet access’.
  • 20% of respondents have attended a Tandaa Symposium. That comes up to almost 34% of Tandaa participants also participating in the grant application process.
  • And finally… most people submitted their proposals on the very last day! leading to a huge spike in submissions on last day

The full evaluation results can be viewed here>

The Internet in Kenya: 15 years on…

This is a presentation I made this morning at the Kenya ICT Board’s Tandaa Symposium on (digital) local content. I talked about the some of the history of the Internet since in landed in Kenya (widely) around 1995 to-date as well as implications going forward where local content is concerned. You can view the SlideShare presentation below: