Kenya’s digital dream is slowly coming into reality as today Wananchi Group, East Africa’s Leading Internet and entertainment Provider, has launched fibre for schools in a ceremony held at the Moi Nairobi Girls School.
Wananchi Groups entered deal with The County Government of Nairobi to provide free internet for schools in Nairobi dubbed WazED.
Richard Bell, Non-Executive Chairman of the Wananchi Group said that the aim for this project is to deliver fibre to every school in Nairobi.
He said that they have begun a pilot project that aims to see 240 schools in the county fitted with fibre internet. After the piloting and the research, Wananchi will roll out the project across 2000 schools in Nairobi County, and then move to other counties.
Present during the launch, Jonathan Mueke, the deputy governor of Nairobi County said: “infrastructure in schools has been looked into and in the next two months there shall be a draft that will see it included in this year’s budget, nevertheless, the government is grateful that Wananchi has taken over the internet infrastructure responsibility as it has off-loaded some of the government responsibilities.”
The governor said that the biggest thing in this project is that to will open up opportunities to the less privileged schools in the county. He also said that as soon Wananchi is done with the government will issue laptops to the 85 public secondary schools.
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The pilot project, according to Bell, will cost a total of Ksh.145 million($168,0188) of which Ksh. 25 million($289,688) will be allocated to the connection and Ksh.120 million($1,390,500) for servicing. The whole project, that is set to begin after the piloting, will cost Ksh.1.2 billion ($13,905,000).
