In central Kenya, nestled between two tea plantations, lies East Africa’s first semiconductor factory. It occupies a conference room converted into a laboratory on the campus of Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, one of the best engineering schools in the country.
Inside, mechatronics engineers dressed in white coats must pass through glass doors, wash their hands before putting on caps and putting on shoe covers. Behind the last door, in a white room lit by sterilizing light, pancakes sparkle [wafers] of silicon
The factory’s crown jewel of innovation is a high-precision lithography machine that engineers have named “Ol’Borana†. It was designed in-house and assembled locally with imported components so that Kenyan engineers understand each component and can repair or reproduce it if global supply chains fail.
“Friend-shoring” strategy
Semiconductor Technologies Limited (STL) founder Anthony Githinji established the company in 2018 after thirty years working in the semiconductor industry in the United States. The STL laboratory is tiny compared to the factories
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It is at the heart of a world turned upside down by the Covid-19 pandemic thatThe Continent was launched in April 2020. This original media aims to bring together “the best reports†made in the four corners of the African continent. “Never has the need to have access to precise, in-depth and accurate information been so pressing… wrote the title in his first editorial. “We can’t give you screening tests. We don’t have ventilators, but we have a vital job to do: inform you.†Adossé au très réputé journal sud-africain Mail & Guardian, The Continent is a weekly newspaper available free of charge, in PDFand designed to be shared on social networks.
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