The government plans to spend at least Ksh 356 billion equivalents to 2pc of the country’s gross domestic product in research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to drive socio-economic development in the country.
According to Science, Research and Innovation Principal Secretary Prof Shaukat Abdulrazak, the budgetary allocation which is an improvement from the current 0.5pc of GDP will help the government to support the AI Strategy 2025-2030 with AI Policy also underway.
“At the moment, we are developing the AI Policy so that it can help us move into this space of using AI to do things better, effectively and efficiently and be able to look at the societal issues,” said Abdulrazak during the National AI Hackathon 2025 organized by the National Intelligence Research University (NIRU).
Abdulrazak said the committee which is developing the policy is expected to complete the works by mid-next year before being presented to the Cabinet for consideration.
The policy is backed to help Kenya effectively utilize AI in an ethical manners in various sectors among others, health, education, security, renewable energy and agriculture.
“It’s critical to ensure AI application is done in an ethical manner. We want to embrace AI but at the same time we have to minimize the negative aspects of this. You have already seen if you look at the social media of how people are playing with AI. The ethical aspect is very critical and this policy is going to guide us into the dos and the don’ts and enable us to embrace AI for social economic development in this country,” he noted.
NIRU Vice Chancellor Dr James Kibon said this year’s hackathon received 2400 applicants with focus on identifying national security and development AI solutions.
Winning innovators will receive technical mentorship, product refinement support, ethical AI guidance all the way to commercialization.
“We want to assist the winners to develop their capacity and move to the areas of further development through our mentorship programme that is why we have been keen to offer mentorship. After the mentorship come March (2026), it transition into the face and looking at minimal five proposals to move into the incubation face after which we will focus on potential commercialization.
The two day hackathon which ended on Tuesday has also saw innovators engage local and international AI experts to support their solutions.
