Why Kenya has no Silicon Valley (2024)

• The first ingredient is the technical brilliance and commercial boldness of American kids.
• Kenyans have some serious work to do which might involve climbing down from the SUV.

Silicon Valley is a very unique place; there probably is no other place like it in the world. But then of course there is no other place like California on earth.

The State reminds one of a Mexican desert, but then there is the effect of the Pacific Ocean, a cold sea from which flows a freezing breeze creating a climatic paradox, at least to a foreigner. The Pacific floods into San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge and opens into a huge bay stretching from San Pedro Bay in the North and as far South as San Jose.

The northern Bay Area is interesting in itself: that’s where San Francisco city is as well as Berkely, home of the famous university, and Oakland, hometown of Vice-President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, an area where crime is conspicuously present.

But it is the southern part of the bay, an area of nearly 1,900 square miles and covering or touching four counties, that is of great interest. Here you will find the homes of Nvidia (recently in the news), Apple, Meta (or Facebook), Google, Intel, Cisco and many others. According to my research, venture capital also flows into this area like those cold waters of the Northern Pacific.

This is the place that 84 billionaires call home. Insanely clever and rich people live and work here. There is a lot of tech innovation taking place, perhaps more than any other place on earth, and more value being created.

So how did it happen? And why here, this place where the beach is not sand but cold, black mud? A lot of people, all of them cleverer than me, have asked that question.

Technology hub

The first ingredient is of course the amazing technical brilliance and commercial boldness of American kids. Many of these companies were built by those kids, or on the backs of those kids. Without them, without their curiosity, obsessive desire to know more and experiment, there would be no technology hub.

The second ingredient is the greed of Wallstreet. Venture capitalists, in their pursuit of profit, will smell out a good idea and build some money around it.

The third ingredient is an abundance of affordable skills. Americans are not enough to service their supercharged economy. Since the days of slavery, they have relied on imported labour, initially from Africa, then Europe, Latin America and now Asia.

If you look at the lower economy cabin of Emirates Airbus A380-800, which in a three-class configuration might have 411 passengers in that 50-metre long, 6.5-metre wide space, you will probably be the only African on the flight to California. The rest are Indians, and they are not travelling on holiday. They are the developed world’s favourite labour these days.

Often, you will hear US politicians talking about kicking out migrants and it is most probably hot air. America needs them almost as much as the migrants need their pay cheque.

Highly skilled and experienced

But most important, Americans are serious and organised. They make policies and consistently apply them. It is a system based on a cluster of values, sustained over time. They take care of family; an expecting mother is very well taken care of. Education until high school is free as is healthcare if you have insurance. The insurance is private, unlike our NHIF or the UK’s NHS.

Talent is spotted and developed early. If you play sport, you are developed from junior school, through to high school and college. You can’t join midway, you start at the beginning. Can you imagine what would happen if Kenyan runners started training seriously in primary school and are consistently developed through to university?

There is respect for work; everyone works, if you don’t work you don’t eat. If you are given a job you do it and take pride in doing it well. A minimum level of honesty is expected too; everyone expects you to tell the truth and not to lie, which many Kenyans have problems coming to grips with.

I have seen Latino men working and observed how little supervision they require. They are serious workers, they know the job, they report early and they work incredibly hard, no malingering. They don’t steal the tools or rob their employer. The approach to the job is different from ours.

Most jobs are done by just one highly skilled and experienced man who arrives with all the tools and materials needed for the job. Here we are used to a fundi coming with a gang of unskilled workers and one tool to be shared between 15 malingerers. They spend the day preparing an inaccurate list of materials, whose cost they inflate.

Silicon Valleys only happen in societies that are engineered for success. Kenyans have some serious work to do which might involve climbing down from the SUV.

Mr Mathiu, a media consultant at Steward-Africa, is a former Editor-in-Chief of Nation Media Group. [emailprotected].