speed wireless access across the length and
breadth of Kenya. To balance the principle of
open access with the need to provide
commercial incentives that foster investment,
the Communications Authority (CA) will license
county-based service providers to offer last
mile access solutions and provide equitable and
affordable access to NOFBI for such licensed
providers.
6.1.2 ICT Infrastructure and Access
The Constitution of Kenya establishes a
devolved system of government and provides
inter alia that broadcasting, postal and
telecommunications services shall be the
mandate of the national government. In
fulfilment of this mandate the national
government has invested and continues to
invest in a National Optic Fibre Backbone
Infrastructure
(NOFBI).
Counties
are
encouraged to provide ICT infrastructure and
skills development as will permit them to take
advantage of this national ICT policy. The
national government will provide such
technical and knowledge support as the
counties may require to give regional effect to
this policy.
This policy mandates the deployment of
the following services and systems:
Infrastructure Sharing: Infrastructure
development and deployment is a capitalintensive undertaking and should be managed
on a prudential basis nationally. The
government will continue, as it has, to invest in
common, publicly available high capital
undertakings such as a national data transport
backbone, central and regional data centres,
and carefully managed shared radio
frequencies. The Communications Authority
will oversee access, license operators, and
regulate and price commercial access to
infrastructure built with public funds. All
infrastructure built with public funds will be
available for use by Kenyan private and
commercial operators on fair, affordable and
equitable terms without prejudice to their size,
location or composition. A legal framework will
be developed to provide for a fair use policy, by
which privately established infrastructure may
on fair commercial terms be made available by
one operator to others. The Communications
Authority will ensure that the arrangements
between operators and service providers
provide national resilience to disasters,
equitable access to naturally limited resources
and sites, and that collocation of services and
equipment is encouraged, while ensuring
Ministry of ICT, Kenya
optimal service reliability, redundancy, carrier
and net neutrality, and the security of data both
at rest and in transit. To this end:
1. The National Government will develop a
National Integrated Infrastructure plan.
Each County Government will also develop
a County Integrated Infrastructure Plan.
These integrated plans will be designed to
facilitate rational, cost-effective, sustainable
and easily maintained ICT infrastructure by
multiple stakeholders
2. The National Government will develop a
central publicly available registry of the ICT
infrastructure and resources of government
agencies, operators, utility companies and
infrastructure building companies to which
reference may be made to prevent
unnecessary duplication and waste of
scarce ICT resources. Regulations will be
promulgated to ensure that regular and
accurate reports are made by government
agencies, licensees and utility companies.
3. Government will strictly enforce quality of
service regulations to ensure reliability and
availability of services
4. Government will provide industry players
with equitable access to publicly owned
infrastructure
5. Government will review the National
Broadband Strategy to ensure provision of
high-speed affordable connectivity to all
citizens in all places. Where it is not
commercially viable for operators to invest
in infrastructure, the government will
promptly build and develop publicly owned
supporting infrastructure to facilitate
commercial last mile service provision.
6. The Government will adopt an Enterprise
Architecture to govern the implementation
and
deployment
of
infrastructure,
hardware, software, systems and services
across the public sector in a coherent, costeffective and sustainable manner. In order
to ensure efficient use of funds and limited
resources, the Government shall reach
agreements for economic bulk purchase of
software licenses and standard ICT
equipment. All government Ministries,
Departments, Agencies and bodies are
required to acquire such licenses and
equipment, as they need, at the reduced
government negotiated price. These prices
will be submitted to the Public Procurement
13/37
November-2019