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{
"id": 1478793,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1478793/?format=api",
"text_counter": 128,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dagoretti South, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. John Kiarie",
"speaker": null,
"content": "I am moving a Motion which I want the Members of Parliament to support, so that we can establish a science museum that will create a nexus among scientists, scientific practitioners, policy makers, students and different members of the public. This will enable us to preserve our technological advancements in a living museum. It might be a point of argument that we already have museums. However, the kind of museum I am talking about is not of natural history, which I refer as dead. With all due respect, I mean dead in the fact that we go there to see exhibitions of taxidermies or stuffed animals that are already dead. We go to see things of the past. A science museum is a living museum which covers the history of technological advancements from the past, taking into cognisance what is happening in the present and also trying to imagine a future as we would want to imagine it. In Kenya today, if you take one line of science, for example, the line of telecommunication which Hon. Elisha knows very well, only a quarter of a century ago, the order of the day was a dial telephone and a call box. For a child who is born today - Generation Z or Generation Alpha - they cannot tell you what a call box, Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (CD-ROM) or floppy disk drive are. This is knowledge that will be lost. If we do not preserve it, we might suffer the fate that our forefathers suffered when traditional historical artefacts were being expatriated from this continent and exhibited in far-flung capitals. As we speak today, it is common knowledge that we have tonnes of traditional African artefacts that are on exhibit in capitals far away from this continent. In this fourth industrial revolution, Africa cannot suffer the same fate. We ought to proactively stand up and claim our pole position as an African technological giant that Kenya is, to spearhead the new era by establishing science museums that will showcase Africa's traditional scientific prowess. When there was COVID-19, people were scampering for a remedy. I dare say that in places like Nyanza, somehow, it was not as prevalent or as bad as it was elsewhere. When you whisper to Members from Nyanza, they will tell you that when COVID-19 broke out, they fell back to a traditional remedy that they had used for centuries to cure and remedy malaria. It is a very bitter herb that is normally boiled and taken as such. It mitigates the effects of fever, flu and COVID-19. That traditional knowledge is what is normally picked up by multinationals. They extract the active ingredients. And because they do not want to have something they cannot preserve, they add preservatives. Even more dangerously, they put up a brand. When it comes on, they give it a premium position, and it becomes an expensive product. Where are the Africans with the Wairimu Plant which is planted in the mountain region, which cures cold or flu? It is an active ingredient that forms part of very many modern medicines. If that knowledge is not preserved or exhibited, it will go to waste. We are coming into a new world which I call the fourth industrial revolution. It is mainly driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI), which relies on data because it is the driver of industry. Data shall fuel the next world. Traditionally, Africa has not written down its data. It is not in numerals or numbers. Today, AI is scrapping data out of the internet which says Africa is not present. This makes us realise that Africa has not africanised the internet as much as we have embraced it. Therefore, going into the fourth industrial revolution, our data might be missing in the formation of the driving force and fuel that will drive it. Most importantly, on data representation, all the main data centres are in the Northern Hemisphere. We want to see Africa contributing its data to be able to drive that fourth industrial revolution."
}