The government will pay you back - at normal rates - not the inflated rate at which you bought the land. They are likely to pay you at pre Konza City prices which is dirt cheap!

But I don't think this applies to the whole 10km. They will acquire 2km to set up a green zone and the other 8km will be under controlled development. You keep the land but build to plan! Might be a Muthaiga in 10 - 20 years. If you have land > 2km from the park you might consider holding on to it.

India created the same konza concept with their silicon valley and from it they advanced on their IT and later graduated to include BPOs becoming the white colar job outsource for the west leaving the blue colar to china.
Kenya is on the right course in providing Konza for development...

I echo Konza will be and remain a real estate venture and nothing more.

Last year i was privy to attend the investors briefing in London and he told us all this "glossy" names have said they are going to set-up shop once this is done ie: Twitter,HP,Skype,IBM and many more, now my colleague (we were there in a business capacity) asked him 3 years ago Hong Kong came up with the same concept and again all this guys said they are going to set-up shop and you know what 3 years later non have, it's ended up being..you guessed right a real estate venture..how do i know this, well again our firm was involved in this and barely made money out of this.

So forgive me for being skeptic but i look at London's own Shoreditch roundabout UK's equivalent of Silicon roundabout 99.9% of ventures are all local start-ups and non of the glossy names, until we find local talent providing local solutions then we are doomed even before we start.

@ Ric Dees. Very true. They should just market cheap land nead CBD, MOmbasa road e.t.c then local ICT guys invest small time then the city grows by itself as opposed to taking the Tatu City /Migaa route whreby they over-direct plot owners in what to develop. Even without all the ICT hype, Konza area will still develop into a Nairobi City hub due to
1.nearness to Nairobi
2.Proximity ot Msa. road.
3.Cheap land
The ICT hype is mostly a fad so as to enable faster human settlement- i believe the main issues here is availability of cheap land. If the hype results to over-rpiced land, then it makes more sense for an ICT company to buy same price of land at Upper Hill ,Westlands or along Msa Road-Libra house area. ICT operates using very minimal space.E.g Safaricom runs alot of its biz from Westalnds and Mombasa road efficiently.

Going by the above, Dubai is a dream. That palm palace, a dream too. Simply, why not clear the air with 10 year bets. How did Vegas come up? I believe in New York people could gamble. Why go to Las Vegas? Simply convergence. If you are going to start making cars in modern day world, you need a place where you can get supplies. Human capital is just a cog on the big wheel. ICT is NOT ONLY about software development,it's MORE than that. Making phones is ICT. Making all manner of electronic chips is ICT. Making comps is ICT. Making servers is ICT. Making navigation consoles is ICT. BPO is ICT. To me,Konza will happen and not only as a real estate venture, but as a ICT hub also.

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I will start on the reds. That's one of the objectives,good infrastructure which lacks everywhere else in Kenya. Most of the serious ICT firms are either in Egypt or South Africa and nothing in between. Konza will be the thing in between.
Expensive internet? Go back to 1999, how much was internet back then? It will be cheaper at some point. I expect the gov't to offer subsidies. Think EPZ. Electricity? KPLC is upgrading it's infrastructure to address that. Geothermal/solar/wind power will mitigate against our current power deficit. Who talked about a "Bill Gates"? Does anyone know where the next great ICT mind will pop from? You can't win a raffle if you don't buy a ticket. Konza is our ticket.
We all know that ours is not a perfect country,but should we just resign to despair?
You do know Vietnam,50yrs ago there was nothing in Vietnam to show for in terms of manufacturing might. It was a tattered state. Just google how they are fairing.
Sad thing is, in modern world, skepticism is usually mistaken for wits.

All this negative energy for what... You are definitely part of Kenya's problem that we are trying to weed out and exterminate for good!!

@Mkeiy...Entrepreneurship and innovation is being talked about continually in Kenya. This isn’t some small-time effort.They’ve been thinking hard and smart about the lessons to be learned not only from Silicon Valley, but with only 40 million people, they are also looking for lessons from other small innovation clusters such as Israel, Singapore and Finland. These countries are great models of countries too small to sustain startups of scale on just domestic consumption yet have managed to create innovation with a global reach.

However that said for a country so focused on innovation and startups the lack of venture capitalists is easily noticeable. Given the interesting things being talked about,one would have thought the place would have been crawling with VC’s fighting over deals. Instead it feels like the government – through ICT BOARD - is doing most of the risk capital investing. Given that great VC’s are much, much more than just a bag of money, this means that startups will lack experienced board members with practical experience. There also seems to be very few stakeholders on-board who know/willing to coach entrepreneurs and to build companies.Lastly there seems to be few tools, techniques and strategies to do so.

Point to note there’s confusion in both the Government about the difference between small business entrepreneurship (startups designed to be family businesses,) scalable startup entrepreneurship (startups designed from day one to scale big inside Kenya and then expand globally) and corporate entrepreneurship

These three types of entrepreneurship need to be explicitly recognized, encouraged and managed

My sense is that Kenya has not yet “declared a major.” Saying that you support entrepreneurship and innovation is a start, but the sentence needs to be finished. Entrepreneurship and innovation in what field? Where will Kenya establish technical and innovative leadership? Is the only way they will attract talent by paying entrepreneurs to come to the country? Or will students and entrepreneurs come to Kenya because it is one of the best places in the world for innovation in certain specific industries (pick your favorite – alternative energy? materials science? food science? cellulose outputs? video games and film? East African web commerce hub? automated mining? UAV’s? etc.)

I think what seems to be missing is a stated goal for Kenya to become a magnet for talent in specific domains. Why will people from East Africa and indeed rest of Africa stream to Kenya, besides its magnificent geography and wild Animals, In what fields will Kenya's universities and entrepreneurial culture create such an irresistible pull?

However, i can point out the elements that made Silicon valley successful, and point out the ones that may be helpful in Kenya; the role of Universities and defense-driven university R&D, the rise of venture capital, a failure-tolerant culture and the emerging science of entrepreneurial education.

So there you go to summarise this, the tech city should be a means to and end not an end itself, we lack glaringly on so many aspects mentioned above and dare i say this, it's about time we stopped focusing on this white elephant projects and start by first feeding our people.

And by the way do you know, the PALM DXB is sinking, do you know due to the huge costs the burj incurred in building and running it will never make money...is this the route you want us to go down to...stay away from the mirage that is Dubai..stay well away.



This info is pro-bono my friend!!

sela.

I agree with you in full. Konza is really an uphill task for Kenya.

That having been said, I trust you agree with the guy who spoke about thika road super highway 6 years ago. no one thought this could happen. That it has happened makes me think that Konza can be done. I beleive so.