Kenyan Entrepreneur hails India’s hosting at AI Impact Summit

At the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Kenyan entrepreneur Dr Shikoh Gitau, founder and CEO of Qhala, has praised India’s hosting and highlighted the potential for collaboration between innovators from the Global South.

"It's been amazing. India has been an amazing, amazing host. We have met a lot of people. Our startups and innovators have made amazing collaborators," she said.

"It's moving from paper to pavement when you talk about South-South collaboration, and we have seen it now. In the last three days of this summit, we have seen clear curiosity and acknowledgement that we need to be able to work together."

She added that the diversity of cultures, languages, and people in the Global South provides unique perspectives in innovation.

"We have diverse cultures, diverse languages, and diverse people. We're not just a homogeneous English-speaking people... That's what we bring to the table as people from the Global South. That's where we see what India has done that you can quickly learn from and move forward," she said.

At the same event,  India and Kenya also signed an Implementation Framework Agreement for a DigiLocker pilot project in Kenya.

The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the summit.

Under the initiative, India’s National e-Governance Division will co-develop the platform, fully customised for Kenyan requirements, as part of the Development Cooperation Programme of India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

The DigiLocker platform allows secure digital storage and real-time verification of official documents. It aims to reduce paperwork and improve access to public services for citizens, students, and businesses, supporting Digital Public Infrastructure collaboration between the two countries.

In India, DigiLocker has more than 500 million registered users and has issued over nine billion documents digitally across more than 2,000 services, becoming a key component of paperless governance.