How Covid-19 has affected Kenya's digital quality of life

The digital quality of life (DQL) in Kenya has been deteriorating during the Covid-19 period, as the demand for affordable, stable, fast and secure online services keeps soaring, a new survey reveals.

The study, which investigated 85 countries in which 81 per cent of the people in the world lived in the past 12 months, picked six countries in Africa for the research, and Kenya emerged at position 77.

Kenya beat Nigeria and Algeria but was unable to surpass the technological convenience in South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia.

While the 2020 DQL Index Edition report, carried out by Virtual Private Network service provider Surfshark, exposes Kenya's weak and below average digital quality of life during the pandemic, it ranks the country 61st in the quality of delivery of e-government services.

"Kenya has better digital government services than Morocco, Indonesia, Nepal and other countries but when it comes to cyber security, Kenya comes 68th," the report states.

Key among factors the study used to rank countries are internet affordability, internet quality and speed, electronic infrastructure and penetration, e-security and e-government services.

"People in 75 per cent of the researched countries have to work more than the global average to afford the internet," the study discloses, ranking Kenya 74th in the internet affordability index, only above Nigeria in Africa.

Internet access

The so-called 'Silicon Savannah' will have to provide equitable internet access to achieve a higher score next year, as it emerged second last in terms of the penetration of electronic infrastructure, only beating Pakistan.

As the government’s Covid-19 directives keep favouring online businesses, jobs and services, the cost of mobile data and cloud storage has been a critical point of decision making for many tech savvy Kenyans, who are navigating the stormy waters of the new normal.

While the World Bank Digital Report of 2019 ranks Kenya's internet speed the second best in sub-Saharan Africa at 10.1 megabytes per second after Madagascar, digital transformation in the country is still plagued by expensive data and a relatively low smartphone penetration.

The latest study by British internet research company Cable shows that although Kenya improved its data affordability levels compared to last year, the cost of 1GB of data in Kenya is still above the global average, at Sh112 from Sh144 last year.

"Three hours and 48 minutes is the global average of working time needed to afford the cheapest broadband internet, while 10 minutes is the global average work time required to afford the cheapest mobile internet," the DQL report states.

The country may perhaps need to learn from Somalia, which now ranks first in Africa and seventh in the world, with 1GB of mobile internet costing Sh53 this year, compared to Sh662 last year.

The research attributed this to the low monopoly in the country's telecommunication industry, where 11 players have battled it out in the past 12 months in a bid to win customer satisfaction.

Citizens of Israel, Canada, Azerbaijan, Poland and Iran enjoy the world's most affordable internet while Zimbabwe and eSwatini have the highest data prices at Sh2,000 and Sh2,139 per GB respectively, translating to roughly Sh100 for every 50MBs of data.

Cyber security

Kenya is now betting on balloon internet that relies on aerial transmitters to try to bring down the cost of data and boost access to underserved regions during the pandemic.

But it still needs to work on its cyber security resilience, having lost Sh29.5 billion to cyber gangs in 2018 alone, according to cybersecurity consultant Serianu.

"E-security has the strongest correlation (0.89) with the DQL. Focusing resources on improving a country's cyber security and protecting people's personal data would have the greatest impact on their digital quality of life," says the DQL study.

Kenyans are gradually adapting to working from home and the stability of the internet there has become of crucial importance during the crisis as video conferences replace live meetings.

"During the first month of the lockdown, 49 of 85 countries experienced deteriorated mobile internet speeds and 44 of broadband connection. Internet speed, both mobile and broadband, is higher in countries with high ICT adoption rates and internet usage," the survey points out.

Information points used to index the digital quality of life around the world were gathered from open data sources provided by organisations including the United Nations, World Bank and the International Telecommunications Union.

Others were the US Department of State, World Economic Forum, Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés, Speedtest, Cable, United Nations University and the International Development Research Centre.