Governance Workshop at iHub Research
iHub Research hosted a governance workshop on Thursday, October 27th, 2011, bringing together governance stakeholders from academia, government, civil society and the technology community. The purpose of the workshop was to identify important issues within Kenyan governance structures, especially looking at different stakeholder roles and relationships. The workshop also explored areas where technology may be able to facilitate and potentially enhance good governance.
The session was part of the SPIDER Governance project that iHub Research has recently embarked on, and was conceived of as a means to obtain a diverse, balanced view on what governance, and good governance in particular, is to different sectors of society. The participants were representative of all the sectors the workshop had intended to reach, and their experience, outspokenness and creative ideas made the session that was moderated by iHub Research Strategist; Hilda Moraa – lively, thought-provoking and insightful.
Hilda Moraa moderating the workshop
A point of consensus was that there is indeed failure in Kenyan governance, especially in accountability, transparency, civic participation and engagement and service delivery. Reasons cited for this lapse included:
- an uninformed and misinformed citizens that are not aware of their basic rights and the power of the masses
- an entrenched culture of corruption in both the citizens and the government where personal gain outweighs personal accountability
- lack of structures to enforce good governance such as lifestyle audits for public servants, and socio-economic constraints, with many citizens too pre-occupied with the struggle to fulfill basic needs such as food to engage in governance discourse.
The participants were of the opinion that changing peoples’ attitudes and mindsets was the first and most important step towards the achievement of good governance. People have to start viewing governance as an issue they should be involved in and not a reserve of ivory-tower academics and civil society organisations. People also have to be made aware of the benefits they will reap from good governance, such as improved living standards. The next step is creation of avenues and structures through which people can engage in governance issues.
Participants putting down their views
ICT comes in handy as a tool to disseminate information and create awareness. An informed citizenry can make sound, informed decisions. This can be achieved through education using ICTs. ICTs such as radio, mobile phones and other mass media can serve the purpose of educating citizens on their rights, provide channels of communication between citizens and the government, mobilise citizens to take action when services are not delivered as they should be and enable them to seek redress. The mobile phone was singled out as a potentially powerful tool due to its wide reach, with over 60% of citizens able to access mobile technology, and its personal, private nature which gives citizens an opportunity to engage in governance solutions in a discreet, personalised way, anytime, anywhere.
The Workshop Participants
A characteristic of a good brainstorm session is that it gives more food for thought. The workshop opened up new perspectives on governance matters and gave the research team food for thought. The session provided a forum for different stakeholders to network, fostering the possibility of working together in the future to realise the dream of good governance in Kenya.
Blogpost by Peggie Kalie, Governance Research Assistant at iHub Research
Jessica Colaço is the Research Lead and Manager at iHub – Nairobi’s Tech Innovation Hub. She is passionate about Innovation, Research, Mobile Technology and Mentorship and Entrepreneurship in Kenya as she uses her position at iHub to court local, regional and international stakeholders to adopt Kenyan-made solutions. Jessica is also a Mobile Technology Evangelist, Founder of Mobile Boot Camp Kenya, Co-founder of AkiraChix and a Bass guitarist in Nairobi, Kenya. She was named one of the top 40 women under 40 years in Kenya’s business scene by Business Daily on 2009 and 2011. She has organized several Mobile Boot Camps in Kenya as well as the first Facebook Developer Garage in Kenya in 2008. She has been featured by CNN Labs, Wired UK and other mainstream media.
Angela Crandall As iHub Research Project Manager, Angela’s main role is to coordinate and plan for the various iHub Research projects. Angela joined the iHub community in October 2010, and is passionate about innovation, especially in the agricultural sector; SME development; and the appropriate use of IT. Angela has been involved in corporate outreach to engage businesses in dialogue on sustainability at the World Wildlife Fund (Washington, DC, USA). She has experience working with infoDev, a global development financing program, housed by the World Bank; the US State Department; and start-ups such as 
Heather Ford, Ushahidi Ethnographer, studies how online communities get together to learn, play and deliberate. She is currently studying how online communities work together to verify information collected from social media sources and how new technology might be designed to help them do this better. Heather recently graduated from the 
Patrick Meier (PhD) is an internationally recognized thought leader on the application of new technologies for crisis early warning, humanitarian response, human rights and civil resistance. He currently serves as Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi, a non-profit technology company voted by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the 50 most innovative companies in the world alongside Facebook, Google and Twitter. He co-founded the International Network of Crisis Mappers and previously co-directed Harvard University’s Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning. In addition, Patrick has consulted for major international organizations including the UN, OSCE, OECD and the World Bank on numerous cutting-edge projects in Africa, Asia and Europe over the past 10 years.
