The country hopes a budding digital technology industry will help drive its economic ambitions, but is a multibillion-dollar government-built “Silicon Savannah” the key to success?
Mombasa Road, the congested, potholed artery that links Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, to its coast, is an unlikely gateway to one of the most ambitious technology developments in Africa. Heading southeast from the capital, it skirts Nairobi’s industrial fringes before entering a world of big, cloudless skies and open savannah: a scene that seems fit for a postcard, though not quite ready for its planned future as a high-tech corridor.