KENNEDY WARIUA OF IBM KENYA’S VISIT

Kennedy Wariua and a Colleague from IBM

KENNEDY WARIUA (IBM Kenyan leader, Ecosystems development) gave a very insightful talk at the University of Nairobi today talking about his life, career and being an entrepreneur. The session was meant for computer science students and the start-ups being incubated at the C4DLab innovation centre. http://www.c4dlab.ac.ke . The call from Kennedy to this audince doesnt come as a surprise since he is very fond of technology and likes working with innovative minds. The session went down at the Code For Development(C4DLab/Phd Lab) at the School of Computing and Informatics.

“I’ve always had a passion for entrepreneurship” He started. By 1994,” I had started doing my first Job” he continued.” there were no same opportunities as there are now, “he said. “The difference was the level of exposure to technolog”.

a student at the session

In that year, Kennedy started working at a shop at the Jomo Kenyatta International airport. He was supposed to go to started bachelor of Arts at Kenyatta University at the time but opted to go to employment since he was not into the arts but into tech. With a small monthly salary of 3,000/= Kenya shillings and siblings defendant on him, he had to supplement it. He started buying rice in bulk and selling to his colleagues at the airport at a profit. within a short time the venture was earning him more money than his job. He worked at the shop for 5 years.

By 2000, Kennedy had found a new place at KenCell communications Limited(Currently Airtel Kenya). He joined the telecommunications company when it was testing the market and still new. He worked there for 8years. During this period, he was also doing private studies online. He eventually graduated with a bachelors degree from Kenya Methodist University(K.E.M.U.).

He later joined Yu Mobile by Essar which was also starting its operations in Kenya at the time. He stilled worked at the technical and IT department as he did at KenCell. He worked there for 3years before joining the IBM team.

“IBM has invested billions to transform Africa” he continued. One of the reasons for this investment is to help de-congest the Nairobi city under their vision for a smarter planet. The main point of the talk was to help the students realize that to work better with IBM, they needed to align their goals with those of creating a smarter planet.

Finally, he urged the students to tryout their Global entrepreneur program. He pointed out the success of MODE(mobile decision) a Kenyan start-up that won the 2012 global IBM SmartCamp and through their program and mentorship is now available in 17 countries.

 

 

 

By Neville Mugambi

Photos by: @MADEKarubiu

IBM RESEARCH LAB CONSTRUCTION IN KENYA

IBM stands for International Business machines….

A quick recap. IBM came up with the coolest super computer called Watson some time in 2011. It was launched at a Quiz game called jeopardy in New York to display its awesome cognitive capabilities.  i.e. the computer can respond to nearly all the questions in the world. the questions can be from any subject, be it Geography, Biology, History, Physics you name it.

The only issue is that the machine is too big. Like a mainframe computer. It about as big a lecture room if you know what i mean and has to be cooled down by a Fridge.

The management of THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA branch of IBM global Corp are working on setting up a research lab in Kenya to enable us to create some other cooler thing “like Watson”. Though, on a serious note, the Research Lab will focus mainly on reducing the Traffic that’s on Kenyan roads. The Solution to this traffic jam problem will pioneer the reduction of traffic jams in the world. Currently, Nairobi has one of the most notorious traffic jam in the world.

Some university students have been selected to attend the Africa institute training… Including our very own Mugambi Neville. The training was at Strathmore school of Business some time in August this year. The attendees of the conference were trained on how most of the IBM products are and how they worked. They also got the chance to experience the Strathmore University community,share ideas and network with some of the prominent IT and Software companies in Kenya. In attendance was also some govt institutions like the KRA and NSSF., who have systems that manage their client (Kenyans) data on an online platform.

Some of the most notable corporates and medium sized companies were: Seven seas technologies from East Africa. They were serious about this whole thing. I bet if there was someone to solve the traffic jam problem, It would be them. The other guys who were busy taking notes also was the IBM competitors HP Kenya... They have nearly the same hardware as IBM and were there taking notes to see their competitors weaknesses.

an IBM pilot programmer at work.

Dr Mark Dean (CTO middle East and Africa) officialy said on the opening ceremony of the conference that,

we want to do innovation in your country.

This Research Lab will be the 12th in the Globe. It will be constructed in Nairobi, Kenya. It will focus its research on the Mombasa-Kampala road. The Research Lab will be a center for

1. Skill
2. Innovation and
3. Ambition or entrepreneurship.

This new application that should be developed will be termed as the “application of analytics that will be able to find the needle in the haystack”. And with Cloud Computing, there will be no need to build your own infrastructure to look like a large company or corporation. to cut this lecture short. They plan on investing Billions to carry out more Africa Related research. So BBIT university course is not useless after all.

Finally… the IBM workshop was a first for me. I couldn’t ask for more from them. It was an experience that every IT person out there would envy. The event was closed on Aug 24th by non other than the Kenyan PS of Communication.

IBM SUPER COMPUTER LOGO