The Digital Village came to life in Kenya for the first time in its original design, the 7th of February 2007, where a joint venture of 5 corporates was setting it up physically on KICC's showground. (See details about our implementation and how our idea was carried out by 5 Kenya corporates. More links to that: Digital Village).

Idea Factory Ltd. of Kenya, headed by MD Peter Kimacia, and the Kenyan Ministry of Information & Communications, represented by Dr. Bitange Ndemo, the same ministry's representative for their ICT department, Mr. Nicholas Awiti, and ourselves were working hectically in the month before the ICT Expo 2007 to make this dream come true. The World Bank's Collins Bruce were talking about the concept of Digital Villages and what that can lead to, on the conference on Norfolk Hotel during the same ICT Expo 2007. Originally we had presented the idea for Dr. Bitange Ndemo back in May 2006, and he expressed very much happiness with that concept, and subsequently then also carried it all the way to the ICT Expo 2007 as one of the bigger attractions. The container concept was subsequently exhibited by 2 television stations (KBC and Citizen) as "unique", and was on TV labeled by Honourable Minister of Information & Communications, Mutahi Kagwe, as "Excellent".

As if it was not enough, Digital Age Institute Ltd. had negotiated with the main event organiser of the ICT Expo 2007, Idea Factory Ltd., and had agreed to that Digital Age Institute Ltd.'s students would be doing further development of a Digital Visitor Registration system, which totally has the special capability of registering thousands of visitors in very short time. The system and principle was approved by Idea Factory Ltd., and implemented for the registration of the ICT Expo 2007 visitors. Thus, at any given time during the ICT Expo 2007, there was maximum 5 minutes waiting at any given time of the day to be registered into the expo hall (The TSAVO Plenary hall of KICC). The software handling this, was only running on 3 machines (laptops), while other providers of similar services with similar extraordinarily low waiting time at registration would require 12 to 20 machines. This is part of the benefits from development in Java which the students had learned in Digital Age Institute Ltd., and the software was using top modern technologies like bar code scanning of Code 3 of 9 barcodes, thus enabling a super swift registration of the visitors, just like in the supermarket, when the items are scanned at the counter. Java is a professional, compiled software language developed and owned by Sun Microsystems Ltd.), but availed for the Open Source market in an unprecedented move in this industry. Java is, unlike the many smaller and more unstable scripting languages, stable, and professionally maintained.

The students was exhibiting 7 products, hereof 4 projects in prototype state, and 3 of them in Pilot state. Let us mention some of the products were as follows: A traffic control system based on our institute's concept as originally learned from Bombardier/Adtranz in Denmark - here with Hardware developed by one of our students which takes care of a secure hardware control of the red, yellow/amber and green control lamps in multiple directions in such a way that no conflicting signal can be shown. The hardware is controlled by an advanced software written in Java by use of multitasking and controlling of the serial port on the computer, all technologies taught here. Yet another product is our Free Yellow Pages, where all corporates in Kenya will be able to register both their name, phone, fax, e-mail, contact and core products free of charge. We expect that it will become a portal of advertisement, and we expect that advertisement by use of the usual banner advertisements will be the way forward to maintain this Yellow Pages service free of charge for those who register and those who search. Ministry of Information & Communications has promised to host the entire service once it is ready. Other products exhibited were a journalising system for registration of journals on case files, an assignment handling system for controlling assignments given to employees. You are welcome to pay us a visit where we can show case the various systems we have already, developed by the students here. We can be found in View Park Towers, 16th. floor, Nairobi, opposite Alliance Francaise, and neighbour to Utalii House. In fact, View Park Towers is on Utalii Lane. Kindly call for appointment on Tel. 213008/9 or 211154 or 2064613 or 0725 144 711 or 0734 936 145. You are also welcome to request more information in terms of brochure materials by sending an e-mail to: click here to request brochures