Technology Meets Agriculture: Irrigation Department to Sign Cloud Deal with Konza Data Center .

The State Department for Irrigation is set to sign a three-year cloud services agreement with the Konza National Data Center in the next two weeks, Director Irrigation Quality Assurance and Licensing, Nguma Kani, has said.

The agreement is between the  State Department for Irrigation and Konza Technopolis Development Authority, a public agency mandated to drive Kenya's digital transformation agenda.

According to Director Kani, the agreement has been reviewed to ensure that it captures the  State Department’s mandate. He emphasized that the key  considerations made in coming up with the agreement were: Data and information security, affordability, hosting capacity, and the flexibility of Konza’s systems.

Kani noted that the arrangement also aims to foster stronger government-to-government collaboration with goal-oriented solutions. He added that the platform is expected to provide a clear roadmap for directing policy within the State Department for Irrigation and enhance service delivery in  the irrigation sector in Kenya.

The Director further said that the agreement will also feature a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that defines standards for service provision  including system availability  customer incident management and support  and processes for service changes.

Speaking at the same meeting, a Senior IT Enterprise Officer at Konza Technopolis, Richardson Musau, said that Konza has often been referred as the "Savanah Silicon Valley of Africa", and has been recognized for its "capacity to deliver secure, affordable and flexible data solutions".