Silicon Valley, a hotbed of technological innovation, is hosting a distinguished visit this week: Kenyan President William Ruto. Before heading to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the leader made a stop in San Francisco to meet tech giants such as Microsoft, Intel, Google and Apple.
This meeting is of major importance for Kenya, which has made new technologies a central pillar of its development strategy. President Ruto thus intends to attract American investments to his country by highlighting the potential of young Kenyan talents.
Kenya is already considered a talent pool in the IT field, with 8% of African developers recorded in the country. Companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon are already present, taking advantage of lower labor costs than in the United States.
However, this presence of American giants raises concerns among local start-ups. Indeed, they deplore seeing their talents being “siphoned off” by these multinationals which offer attractive salaries, well above those they can offer. This situation makes it difficult to develop a real local ecosystem of new technologies.
The challenge is therefore to find a balance between attracting foreign investors and preserving local resources. President Ruto hopes to convince Silicon Valley players to support Kenyan start-ups by investing in their development, while benefiting from the country’s talent and innovation potential.
This visit to Silicon Valley constitutes an important step for Kenya in its desire to become a technological hub in Africa. It now remains to be seen whether the resulting agreements and partnerships will truly boost the Kenyan digital ecosystem and offer new opportunities to the country’s youth.