Kenya Digital Economy Acceleration Project

The development objective of the Digital Economy Acceleration Project for Kenya is to enhance digital infrastructure, services, and skills for inclusive participation in the national digital economy and to boost cross-border digital services. The project comprises of five components. The first component, digital infrastructure, and access aim to increase access to high-speed internet for individuals, industry, and government - the foundation of the foundations of a digital economy and strengthen Kenya’s role as regional digital leader. It consists of following sub-components: (i) extending the reach of the backbone networks (middle mile); (ii) increasing last mile connectivity for education; (iii) enhancing government connectivity; and (iv) strengthening the digital enabling environment. The second component, digital government and services will invest in automating and digitizing selected government services while strengthening the legal and policy frameworks and the technical architecture needed to enable a whole-of-government transition to paperless government. It consists of following sub-components: (i) digitizing selected government services; and (ii) developing the critical enablers for digital government. The third component, digital skills and markets aims to equip young Kenyans with digital skills and strengthen their abilities to access and compete in domestic and regional markets through supporting skills development, to study mechanisms to improve access to affordable devices and through enhancing the enabling environment for e-commerce to support Kenya’s role as a regional digital hub. It consists of following sub-components: (i) supporting digital literacy; (ii) enhancing employment-ready digital skills; and (iii) promoting device affordability. The fourth component, project management will support project implementation, coordination, and capacity building for the project implementation unit (PIU). The fifth component, contingent emergency response...