Eight Days in Kenya!

I returned from Nairobi the afternoon of Sep 15 quite lagged from the 21 hours of flight time. I must give a plug to my dear friend and personal African travel agent, Mahinda, for hooking us up on Emirates. If you’re going to Africa, it’s the best way to go. The service is fantastic and you get to go through the Dubai airport. The architecture is awesome and strolling down the concourse was like a walk down Rodeo Drive!

 

The Secure ICT conference was a success in spite of a conflicting conference that pulled away all of the government representatives – almost 70% of the registrants. The East African Internet Governance Forum was suspiciously scheduled just 30 days ago to take place Sep 7-9 conflicting with our two-day event on Sep 8-9. We learned that the EA-IGF was convened by one of the Kenyan officials to whom Evans Kahuthu, our organizer, had spoken to numerous times. During those conversations, Alice Munyua, assured Evans that there were no conflicting meetings on the government calendar, Kenya representatives would attend, and that she had informed her boss, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Information and Communications, of our conference.

 

Upon arrival in Nairobi on Sunday, Evans briefed us, his team of presenters, on this conflict and issue. It seemed to be a typical example of Kenyan bureaucracy where government officials block access and information that might compete with their personal capabilities and role. Evans got our team invited to the EA-IGF and we made our plans to attend the first day of the conference. His strategy was to get the attention of the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Bitange Ndemo, and surround him with the team of experts speaking at our conference. They were:

 

Dr. Tapie Rohm, Professor, CSU San Bernardino

Dr. Javier Torner, Information Security Officer, CSU San Bernardino

Dr. Conrad Shayo, Professor, CSU San Bernardino

Dr. Isaac Rutenberg, Patent Agent, Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo

 

Evans knew that if Dr. Ndemo engaged with his former CSUSB professors, he’d want to hear more. Mission accomplished! And the irony of it all was that Dr. Ndemo directed the subordinate that had blocked Evans to set up the meeting. He wanted to hear more about how Evans and this team can help address the security issues that will arrive with East Africa’s increased bandwidth to the world. A meeting was set up for Thursday evening.

 

Our conference went very well. We hoped that the remaining 30% of registrants would show and they did. They appeared to get a lot out of the information shared. Everyone attended both days to the very end and many hung around afterwards each day, giving us all very positive feedback. I was able to give a short talk on the online education opportunity more bandwidth offers, the change management aspects of addressing security risks, and how business, not technology, needs to drive decisions beginning with raising awareness as we intended for the conference.

 

 

Key learning for me, personally, was

 

–          the global nature of cybercrime

–          That the trend toward cloud computing us equally at risk if the entry points are not protected

–          That all of my passwords need to be changed to at least 14 characters

–          That doing business in Kenya us about who you know and not necessarily what you know

–          That strongest security protocol for my home wireless network is WPA2

 

A few changes to make now that I’m home!

 

Our team met with Dr. Ndemo and a committee he had just established to prepare an amendment to the ICT policy document on how Kenya will address Internet security. Dr compro viagra kamagra oral jelly france. Ndemo is a very insightful and visionary man and the committee he convened, led by Executive Director Esther Muchiri, represented the ICT concerns of the various ministries. Before discussing next steps for how we might help them frame the policies and plans, Dr. Ndemo shared his priorities for ICT in Kenya. First he wanted to close the gap between the number of university graduates and their ability to acquire relevant work and jobs. We heard this concern from other Kenyans and the issues is that the education graduates receive does not have enough practical application. Second, Dr. Ndemo places priority on the implementation of Digital Villages that not only provide eGovernment services but begin the collection of indigenous knowledge. Something else he’d like to do is digitize the vast amount of academic research that is currently only available as hardcopy in university libraries.

 

It was a great meeting that went on far after Dr. Ndemo had to leave, not before asking for the team’s help in creating certificate and university curriculum on the practical issues of implementing, managing, and maintaining a secure ICT infrastructure. We talked with the committee for another hour on steps forward and I just saw a follow-up message from Ms. Muchiri in the 500+ email messages I haven’t got to yet, but I especially want to stay in contact with her. When she learned about the work I do with nonprofits, she asked for my ideas for youth mentoring programs.

 

It was an intense, busy visit. In addition to all of the activity and follow-up from the conference, I was facilitating two concurrent UOP classes, which was difficult because even though fiber optic cable has made it to Nairobi, almost none of the “last mile” has been installed to hotels and conference centers like Lenana House where we stayed. Wireless internet connectivity is still painfully slow.

 

But as a reward for the hard work, Mahinda arranged for the weekend in Mombasa for some R&R. I’ll let the pictures tell the story! Mahinda took a few I haven’t seen yet that show that it wasn’t so much R&R as it was D&P (drink and party) with some of his friend and family. I’ll share those when I get them.

 

We returned to Nairobi on Sunday night and made plans to accompany Mahinda’s aunt,  Ms. Salome Lenana, to a visit to community of people that was displaced from the Rift Valley after the violence that erupted after last year’s presidential elections.  In October 2008, Ms. Lenana and her sister,  Gladys Wachira, donated land they inherited near the border of Nyeri and Laikipia to these forty families. We took a 2.5 hour drive north of Nairobi to a part of the country that is really devastated by the drought. The government has been promising the people the materials to build pre-fab homes made of tin (see picture) but nothing has been done and they are still living is the tents provided by the UN. A couple of government official met us there and Ms. Lenana and the community’s leader expressed their disappointment, not only in coming through on the housing but also for the lack of help with the basics such as dry milk for the children. Each house only costs a few hundred dollars in materials and I have a goal to raise money for at least one.

 

 

The amazing thing to witness was the love and sense of community in spite of the conditions. The children sang and they were so thrilled to receive the soccer uniforms and balls that Jesse brought for them. It was a heart-warming day and I hope to continue to support Ms. Lenana’s generosity in any way I can.

 

All in all, a very good trip. I expect I’ll be back next year to do management awareness training as part of the conference follow-up and while I’m there continue my immersion into Kenya. I truly look forward to my next return.