Good job done by Seacom so far is commendable. So I take a moment to try and figure out who Seacom is and according to their website, “SEACOM is a Mauritian company owned 75% by African investors as a collaboration between East and Southern Africans and owns 100% of the SEA International Cable. A small group of Investors with proven access to both debt and equity, were selected specifically because they were not national telecommunications operators thus avoiding value chain interference by to separating the ownership of the asset from its use” That is good for PR. Just before that paragraph, there is a small chart of cable ownership and it leaves me wondering why Kenya and Tanzania has to own only 35% of the cable in our countries while Seacom owns the other 65%. Looking at all the other countries where Seacom is present, the country owns 100% of the cable.

I just have questions, why cant we be 100% owners? What are the direct implications on cost to the consumer for that? What were the ownership options and is it that we didnt have investors with the capacity or was it dictated or politically “arranged”?  So far, Seacom cant even release the list of ISPs buying bandwidth from them something that makes me even get more questions.

Lets move from looking for blames and excuses to finding solutions with the resources that we have.

There is an old Kikuyu saying that goes …”You cannot take a donkey to the river and force it to drink the water”. So Seacom has delivered proper bandwidth at our doorsteps. Soon retailers will be giving us a share of the affordable and better internet. Question is, what are we going to do with it? We had our previous connections and as slow as they were or expensive as they were, they gave us a way to communicate with the world, infact, they still are until we get proper retail services from the ISPs.

I would like to challenge us to be innovative as we await the price drops and service delivery from our ISPs. What can we do to change our Nations? What can we do with better connectivity to increase the quality of education? What can we do to deliver better services at our jobs? What can we do to save time with the capacities that come with good connectivity? How can you make your children’s life better than yours using the new opportunies presented by this connectivity to the rest of the world?

Africa has waited too much for guidelines from the west and this is time we take the road South Korea took in the early 90s. We need to be creative and support our own. We need to start creating and innovating. We need to invent something that the west can adopt. We need to be leaders in something other than corruption, poverty, greed and war. We need to have IT managers lead our Nations and avoid the likes of most of our current leaders. Am specifically ashamed to say I come from Kenya when I look at our situation. Am looking for the young people who can identify with what am talking about, lets change our lives. Africa, wake up, you have the chance to make the world turn round and ask “Is this really the Africa in History Books?”

Lets move from looking for blames and excuses to finding solutions with the resources that we have.

Use of Seacom's fiber optic connection goes live in Kenya

Seacom may have arrived in Kenya but the expectation that people had on 23rd July were way beyond reality. People, including those with little use for the internet expected a complete U-Turn which basically takes time, resources, will and the correct planning. Good news though, Safaricom has gone live on the Seacom link.

Am currently using my 3G connection from Safaricom and I tell you this for sure, there is atleast 3 times better speeds in town now! Thanks once again Safaricom for proving that besides the bitter options, you are still the better option. Now I hope the 600mb data remaining on my account will be trippled as well, or should we not expect price changes?

Michael Joseph is a man who knows what brought him to Africa, congrats again. Lets all get busy with the good speeds!