Dr. Elijah Bitange Ndemo was born (born 4 December 1959 (age 58)) in Kisii County in South Western Kenya . He is an ICT Champion, Academician, and a Newspaper Columnists with the Kenyan Newspapers Daily Nation and its sister publication, Business Daily and serves currently as an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Nairobi’s Business School where he teaches and researches on entrepreneurship and research methods with most of his research work being focused on ICT and small and medium enterprises and their influence on economic development in Kenya. He is the immediate former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication where he served from 2005 to 2013 under the former Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki and was awarded the prestigious presidential Chief of the Burning Spear of Kenya (CBS) award for his distinguished services in 2006.
Ndemo is regarded as one of the key people who oversaw the transformation in the Kenyan ICT Sector while the Permanent Secretary through various ICT policies and projects such as launching of undersea submarine cables, the mushrooming of business process outsourcing industry, the dramatic reduction in mobile termination
rates (MTRs), initiating of the Kenya Open Data and the growth of tech hubs such as iHub and mLab in Kenya through effective regulation.
Prof. Ndemo holds a PhD in Industrial Economics from the University of Sheffield in the UK , an MBA from the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) in the USA and bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Minnesota. He is the immediate past Honorary Chair of the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) and an Advisor to the Better than Cash Alliance, a global initiative to digitize payments.