The fund, managed by the Universal Service Advisory Council (USAC) under the tutelage of the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) , has seen the CA roll out ICT projects in areas that previously could not access these services
But it has also faced its fair share of challenges trying to implement projects — from low funding, insecurity to inaccessibilty of some areas
The operators are required to contribute 0.5 percent of their annual turnover to the fund with the regulator topping 25 percent revenue surplus.
Some of my successes include negotiating with licensees to contribute to the fund, which saw operators first billings in 2014, overseeing ICT Access Gaps Study in 2016 that resulted in the identification of unserved and underserved areas of the country and development of an interactive Geo-portal used in the identification of underserved areas and populations
Others are development of a five-year USF Implementation Strategy and Governance Framework which guide the implementation of the USF projects; review of the Universal Service and Access Regulations, scaling-up of the E-Resource centeres project within the Kenya National Library Service (KNLS) outlets that resulted in the computerisation of all the 62 libraries in Kenya; and connection to broadband and support to 8 ICT centres for people with disabilities.
We also have the partnership with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) on digitisation of the secondary school curriculum, expansion of voice infrastructure and services in 67 out of the targeted 78 sub-locations, and provision of education broadband connectivity to 885 or 94 percent of the targeted public secondary schools.
The design of phase 2 of the voice infrastructure and services projects will upon implementation see deployment of mobile voice services in additional 123 sub-locations spread across 19 counties in Kenya.
Under the first phase of USF, our target was to connect 1,000 public secondary schools with the Internet and 202 sub-locations in remote areas with voice services.
