Last week I had the good fortune of attending the Connected Africa Summit 2026, which ran from Monday the 27th to Thursday the 30th of April. It was a remarkable four days - an opportunity to learn from captains of industry and key policymakers both at home and abroad.
Monday was reserved for site visits. Our group, which included foreign dignitaries in the ICT sector, was taken to several locations showcasing the Government of Kenya's ongoing efforts to digitize the economy and improve the lives of its citizens.
Our first stop was the Affordable Housing project at Mukuru Kwa Njenga, already well advanced - some units were occupied. The development sits on roughly forty acres donated by the government. Each block is generously spaced, with paved avenues running between them, and the blocks themselves are oriented around interior courtyards so that no apartment goes without sunlight as the day turns. The site director explained that while the government had constructed the blocks and connected them to water, electricity, and internet, the complex would ultimately be managed by private realtors - a deliberate design choice that emphasized long-term economic viability, even though the units are listed well below market rate for comparable housing. It was the first articulation of what would become a recurring theme throughout the summit: that the most effective solutions emerge from a deliberate collaboration between the public and private sectors, in service of the ordinary citizen.
We then visited the East Africa Device Assembly Kenya plant - EADAK. In operation since 2023, the plant has produced two million smart devices for the Kenyan market alone. The cost of devices has long been one of the central barriers to the digitization of African economies, with most being imported at considerable expense from overseas. EADAK's model is elegantly simple: it is cheaper to import components and assemble locally, and that arbitrage has allowed the company to grow quickly. The director spoke of ambitions to expand into regional assembly, serving countries across the broader East African Community. The factory floor made those ambitions feel credible - staff in blue safety gear and hairnets moved purposefully among machines that hummed and beeped with a quiet industrial authority.
Next was Nia Fiber, a young company specializing in the manufacture of fiber optic cables - and, the director was keen to note, the only such manufacturer in the region. Their client list includes Safaricom and Liquid Telecom, two of East Africa's most significant telecoms operators. The company was candid about the role government grants and permits played in giving them their initial foothold, and equally candid about their ambitions: to export across the continent in service of African digitalization. We were given a tour of their single, cavernous warehouse, outfitted in bright safety vests against the noise of machinery that, in some loose visual way, recalled the humble loom - except that what it was weaving would carry the region's data traffic. Finished rolls of fiber optic cable in plastic wrapping lined the walls, waiting to be shipped.
Our final stop was Konza Technopolis, a cornerstone of Vision 2030, located about an hour from Nairobi in the open flatlands of Machakos, where you can see for kilometers to the horizon. The Cradle, the complex's centrepiece, rises starkly from the landscape - two buildings, one rectangular and one yet unfinished, capped with a great dome. The construction director walked us through what makes Konza a smart city: monitoring nodes distributed throughout, through which a resident can reach the central control station; a sophisticated waste management system; and, most impressively, a data center forming the backbone of Konza Cloud. The vision extends beyond Kenya's borders: officials made clear that the cloud infrastructure is intended to serve the region, providing digital services to neighboring countries. From the roof of the Cradle, the city below looks like a scale model - immaculate roads, properly marked intersections with functioning traffic lights, and empty lots ready for what comes next.
We also toured the Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Even incomplete, it is architecturally the most striking building I saw that day - exposed concrete pillars and open stairwells in the brutalist tradition, most rooms still unpainted. The labs for civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering were equipped and ready, though only one was in active use: the robotics lab, where we were treated to a demonstration of an autonomous robotic hand sorting materials by touch alone. KAIST is planned as a postgraduate institution for science and technology, intended to open in the coming years to a small, selective cohort - predominantly Kenyan, with a minority of students drawn from other African nations, and a minimum GPA requirement of 3.7 for admission.
The common thread running through it all was the same: an explicit collaboration between the public and the private sector. The government clears the ground and the businesses build upon it, each with an eye beyond Kenya's borders. EADAK, Nia Fiber, Konza-each spoke not just of serving the local market but of supplying, cabling, and hosting their neighbors. Whether that ambition is realized remains to be seen, but after four days at the summit, it was hard to doubt the seriousness with which Kenya is pursuing it.