By Dennis Dibondo
The Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) held a four day training session for journalists in the Central and Eastern Kenya region.
The training was held in Nanyuki town, Laikipia county started on Monday and ended yesterday.
CA Central and Eastern region manager Dr. Emma Otieno said the training is part of strategy by the organisation to engage and enhance interaction for purposes of communicating to stakeholders their mission, vision, plans and projects.
“We also want to get feedback in terms of areas of improvement as we believe learning and knowledge is a continuous process,” Dr Otieno said.
“We want to enlighten the media on the roles and regulations to be able to inform the public they can be our ambassadors,” Dr Otieno added.
As CA now marks 25 years since its establishment, Dr Otieno said, they have achieved a lot and are working tirelessly to make sure all Kenyans get adequate communication services.
“We have achieved much before the digital migration we used to have 60 percent penetration in telecommunication but now we have about 98 percent and this has helped a lot to even change the country’s economy as ICT has become a big boost in achievement of vision 2030,” Dr Otieno noted.
She said they have increased the number of licencee who are offering ICT services because it is one of the sectors driving the economy.
“We have created an enabling environment that has seen a lot of interest in the ICT and telecommunication sector we always ensure there is quality of service to consumers,” she revealed.
The regional manager said five years ago in Central and Eastern many parts did not have enough mobile network coverage and broad band services but CA initiated projects using Universal Service Fund and was able to increase the availability of ICT services.
She said they will do similar training and workshops across the country.
Dr Otieno said they prioritize innovation and they have encouraged Kenyans to come up with innovations in the telecommunication sector by setting up a sand box.
Victor Maina, a member of CA team said they hope the 50 trained journalists will help by going ahead and sharing information and knowledge with their colleagues and public.
“Come next year, we hope to sustain this and engage more,” Maina said.
Francis Sitati who also works with the authority’s cyber security department said they have a cyber security operation center for the ICT and telecommunication sector.
“We coordinate the response to cyber incidences and we give our stake holders information about cyber threats so that they can take corrective action in their networks and infrastructure,” he said.
Sitati said they work with over 50 organisations in the private sector and the government to share information and create trust networks in cyber.
“We also do awareness creation and capacity building we have a committee that we meet every quarter to discuss about cyber security,” he said.
Sitati said they have done many training on cyber security such as cyber threats,intelligence,cloud security.
“You know October is globally recognized as a cyber security awareness month and we conducted other training with over 100 stakeholders,” Sitati said.
Journalists commended CA for the insightful training saying they will apply the knowledge to enlighten the public
