Kenya has shifted attention to local content generation and hosting as a way of pushing down Internet connectivity costs as the SEACOM and TEAMS fiber-optic cables have failed to live up to the hype of low costs. The country is hoping to learn from the West Africa region, which has not enjoyed low Internet costs despite having an SAT-3 fiber-optic connection since 2002. The government and Internet service providers are banking on local content to push down the costs. East Africa has two fiber-optic cables linking with Europe, national fiber-optic backbones and Internet exchange points, and companies have expanded their networks to cover the region. The World Bank, Africa Development Bank and Middle East investors have also put money in fiber infrastructure as well as launching new satellites.

However, the content being pushed through those networks is largely international, meaning the cost of connectivity has not significantly changed. ISPs in Kenya have realized that infrastructure is one part of connectivity, and without local content, costs of connectivity will remain high and consumers will keep complaining.
"We are taking leadership in the ICT sector by partnering with content  providers across all sectors of the economy including government, and offering them high-quality yet cost-effective solutions over our infrastructure in the East African region and globally," said Joshua Chepkwony, chairperson and CEO of Jamii Telecom.
As one of the major shareholders of TEAMS fiber-optic cable, Chepkwony says the company is working with media, government, educational and financial institutions to deliver content that will allow consumers to leverage the extensive infrastructure.
Content generation has been cited as a major driver for low connectivity costs because it will eliminate the cost of international connectivity. The government has been identified as a central player in encouraging local content generation.
The Kenyan government is leading the call for local content and hosting after complaints of high Internet costs, with the government being accused of standing by as ISPs conspired to keep the costs higher. The government has a US$3 million content generation fund, which is expected to spur the industry.
"The government registries in the ministries of Lands, Judiciary, Motor Vehicle registration, Company Registry and Immigration are all in various stages of the procurement process. Once the shared service platform is ready, it will change," said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication. 
Ndemo was responding to criticism that the government continued spending on advertising jobs in newspapers and ignored online advertising, where it had an opportunity to reach higher numbers.
"How can the government get money to place an advert in the print media worth 7 million Kenyan shillings, which only reaches 1 million people, yet you are having a problem digitizing critical information?" asked Robert Yawe, CEO of KAY System Technologies in Nairobi.
In West Africa, Ghana is a tech leader, but it is still facing challenges developing and encouraging people to use local content as a way to make connectivity cheaper.

Over the past few years there have been a number of policies on e-government, but implementation has been slow and all of the government Web sites are still static with only a few forms available for download, said Kwaswo Ansah, an IT expert and consultant based in Accra.
"Apart from the setting up of an Internet exchange point, there has been very little done to encourage local Web hosting and the development of local content for Ghanaians," Ansah added.
Ansah thinks that innovative content will be needed to educate and speed up the development process in the continent, which can justify the massive cost of building thousands of miles of submarine fiber bringing gigabits/second Internet to Africa.
While local content generation and hosting will help lower the costs, many country top-level domains are poorly managed with unfriendly pricing structures compared to the economies where they are based.
"Once we get higher numbers for the .ke, the price can be reduced from the current $40 per domain," said Joe Kiragu, the administrative manager at KENIC, the .ke TLD registry.
Kiragu admitted that the ICT industry in Kenya has been calling for lower domain costs but was noncommittal on when KENIC will heed the call and lower costs.
According to Google, it is very important that Web site owners register on .co.ke (or .co.ug etcetera) if they target the local population and not .com or .net because it helps in their ranking on Google for local users.
"Domain registries in some African countries think of themselves as a business rather than public service. From our perspective, domain names shouldn't cost any more than $1 or $2 per year, and pricing them at current levels (tens of dollars and beyond) is constraining the development of the Internet in Africa," said a Google source, who requested anonymity.
Google is one of the major sources of content in Africa, and the company says it is deploying caching devices in various locations where it makes sense, especially for bandwidth-hungry applications.