During his speech on Tuesday at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, President William Ruto praised the advancements Kenya has made in the technology sector.

He informed the delegates that Tim Cook, the CEO of the American tech giant Apple, told him that the multinational company employed roughly 23,000 Kenyans in Nairobi during his September 2017 visit to the United States for the U.S.-Kenya Business Roadshow.

Ruto made this statement to rally support for the digital economy, which he described as a source of opportunities for young people to pursue remote learning without leaving their homes.

"The digital economy is delivering attractive opportunities for young people, to work for employers scattered across the world without having to leave their homes in Kenya," Ruto noted.


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"When I visited Silicon Valley last year, Apple's Tim Cook informed me that his company now employs about 23,000 Kenyans, all working from Nairobi."

Ruto stated that his attention is now more focused on the potential of the combination of energy and technology and the potential of Kenyan youth. He cited the example of a college student he met in the remote village of Kaiboi in Nandi County who works remotely for an AI company based in Germany.

"We must not allow a fear of future unknown to deprive brilliant youngsters like Brian of opportunities. If we sacrifice the benefits of progress hoping for security, we risk losing both," he said.

Ruto called Kenya's M-Pesa mobile banking platform a proud example of homegrown innovation and praised the country as a regional leader in technological advancement.



"In Kenya, we understand that the soul of innovation is the constant endeavor to meet public demand by providing solutions to problems, efficiently delivering services, and transforming challenges into productive opportunities," he said.

Regarding governance, Ruto stated that his administration is committed to automating public services and digitizing all government procedures so people can access them whenever it is most convenient.

"In the last year, we increased the number of digitally accessible government services from 5 percent to over 80 percent. The goal is to make the government 100 percent digital by the end of this year," he said.

Approximately 160,000 people work at Apple worldwide.

After a U.S. roadshow intended to showcase the business and investment opportunities in Kenya's rapidly expanding technology sector, President Ruto ignited controversy by declaring he had reached a deal with Apple and other prominent Silicon Valley names that would see these companies provide hundreds of thousands of digital jobs to Kenyans.



"I visited Google, Intel and Apple. All these companies are looking for online workers," said Ruto then.

Without getting into specifics about which corporation promised to employ what number of workers, the president added, "They want us to give them 100,000, 200,000, and 300,000 workers out of the Kenyan youth."