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{
    "id": 18856,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/18856/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 533,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Wednesday, 12th October, 2011(A) Mr. Mureithi",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir. I will not take long because my colleague here, Mr. Wambugu also wants some time to speak about this wonderful Motion. I must commend Dr. Otichilo for coming up with this very important Motion regarding the development of space technology. One of the biggest tragedies in this nation, and I think we must address ourselves to these issues, is that Kenya comes up with very wonderful ideas throughout history. But what has happened is that as soon as we get those ideas some other people come, find those ideas, they are shelved or taken away by other countries and then Kenya is left behind. My biggest worry right now is that according to the international requirements, a country is supposed to set aside 3 per cent of its GDP for research. If you look at Kenya, the money that is set aside for research in this nation is very minimal. That is why you will find that areas that relate to food production, leave alone space technology, have very little money allocated to them. What has happened to us now, for being left behind technologically, is that we have to buy bandwidth from agents. If you look at the technology that was developed by the Italians, if you go to Google, they have space for billing if you want to use their technology. This means Kenya is losing a lot of foreign exchange. This is one of the areas where Kenya has come up with a good idea, but it is taken over by other people. We have a satellite at Longonot, but it has remained rudimentary. We have not actually managed to develop a satellite that would help us make money as a country. Look at the issue of oil exploration in Kenya, we are hiring a lot of people in this area whereas the developed world uses space technology to find out where there is oil formation. So, they take a shorter time. Since Independence, we have commissioned many companies to prospect for oil in Kenya, but we have not managed to get some. Many countries, including Rwanda use space technology in order to prospect for such. If you look at the minerals that we have in the country, as it was mentioned by one of the Members Nyatike area, all the way to the northern side, has gold. But because we have to dig manually to find out how much we have on the ground, we are actually lagging behind. Look at the coal that we have in Ukambani, it is several billion tonnes. But we have not actually extracted it because we have not done any mapping in order to see exactly how much expanse of that coal we can develop. We keep talking about it."
}