The Kenya Cabinet Minister for ICT and Digital Economy Promotes the Private Kenya Digital Token on Solana

The Kenya Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Communications, and the Digital Economy (MICDE), William Kabogo, has openly supported the Kenya Digital Token, a private initiative that he says aligns with the government agenda on the virtual assets policy, now under parliamentary review.

According to the Minister:

“I welcome the launch of the Kenya Digital Token as a bold step by the private sector to expand the digital economy. It will reflect the growing confidence in tokenization as a tool for value exchange, inclusion, and innovation.”

The government Minister highlighted that while the Kenya Digital Token is not a government initiative, he said it aligns closely with the country’s broader national vision which is anchored in the upcoming virtual asset service providers policy and draft bill.

Mr. Kobogo continues to say:

“Importantly, [The token] speaks directly to the heart of the Kenyan bottom up economic transformation agenda which empowers youth, drives economic dignity and embracing technology to unlock opportunity.

If structured responsibly, Kenya Digital Token will open new doors for youth engagement, micro-investment, and community-led value creation especially in underserved regions.”

In a tweet, Kabogo said the government’s approach remains measured by prioritizing public safety and sound regulation while striving to support innovation and financial inclusion.

“Ongoing policy development aims to balance opportunity with robust oversight.”

Speaking about the opportunity for Kenyan citizens, the minister said:

“Our people are already participating in this digital economy. Traditionally, in the ICT, regulation follows innovation so that we don’t strive progress. That is exactly the approach we’re taking here

The focus now is in transforming this momentum into tangible opportunity. Digital assets have the capacity to power real change. By leveraging on them, they can drive youth empowerment and open up new job opportunities in tech.

With blockchain, someone in any village can now access global markets, raise capital or invest in tokenized assets. Tokenization in particular unlocks new ways to manag and share value safely, transparenty, and efficiently.”

The Minister has previously advocated for tokenizing key government projects.

According to Kabogo, tokenizing will help the government not only raise funding for projects such as Konza City, but also enable Kenyans invest in viable projects that have a guranteed return on investment.

In a recent video, Kabogo has said that the Ministry supports digital assets but in a responsible way that prioritizes public safety and economic opportunity at the center.

In 2023, as reported by BitKE, the Government of Kenya partnered with the Abu-Dhabi-based Venon Foundation to establish a blockchain innovation hub in Nairobi in order to provide essential tools and resources to support African nations in building a robust foundation for digital transformation.

The Foundation said it would be ‘working with the Kenyan government to develop and implement blockchain solutions for various sectors such as supply chain management, land registry, voting systems, and asset tokenization.’

In 2019, as reported by BitKE, the then Cabinet Secretary for ICT, Joe Mucheru, launched the Kenya Blockhcain & AI taskforce report after one year of study in emerging technologies and their use case in the country.

The report took months of getting public opinions which included deliberations within the private sector and the Blockchain Association of Kenya (BAK) that presented the different use cases and implementations before the committee at the time.

The report included a number of key recommendations where blockchain & AI use in government would enable for more efficient service delivery. These include:

• Eliminating corruption through blockchain transparency and immutability
• Minimizing national debt through digital assets frameworks
• Strengthening democracy and elections by offering real-time immutable polling results
• Facilitate financial inclusion and reduce transaction costs through a national payment gateway leveraging blockchain
• Improvement of public service delivery via a single source of truth that leverages on blockchain
• Creation of a digital sovereign currency like MPESA that is tradable outside Kenyan borders with other global currencies digitally
• Delivery of affordable housing and allocation that matches buyers to sellers using the transparency of blockchain
• Improving health & drug safety by tracking and tracing medical supplies and service delivery
• Expand manufacturing and eliminate counterfeits by increasing visibility across the manufacturing value-chain
• Improve cyber-security by fully decentralizing Domain Name Systems and distributing the content drastically reducing attacks from hackers
• Improve land titling by digitizing and tokenizing land assets and creating ummutability and increase transparency via blockchain
• Improve cross-border trade that reduces shipping delays and ensures better and transparent tax remittances via blockchain

The current efforts by the Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy thus build on years of work from previous administrations and efforts that are to be commended.

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