Promotion of Culture and Creative Industries / Creative Economy
The main objective of the measure is to assess and bring all relevant government agencies to work together to promote and protect the diversity of cultural expressions in a digital environment. Further the meaure aims to to link culture and creative industries through policies, institutions and regulations that promote cultural exprresions as well as protect copyrights. The growth of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Kenya just like the rest of the world there is emergence of new concept of new media which has affected the way cultural goods are produced and disseminated and also interaction of the diversity of cultural expressions. Though Information Communication Technology presents many opportunities for development of culture it has also posed great threat to minority cultures of the world due to competition and dominance of western nations cultural expression on new media. For example in Kenya after digital migration of media broadcast some locally owned broadcasts could not survive and had to close down. At the moment there are no explicit laws to address the new challenges .It is also noted that new media in creative industries is a wide domain which cannot be addressed by individual ministries and require coordinated government mechanism that cuts across ministries To counter the challenges of new media in protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions the kenya government has introduced a policy that requires all broadcast media to air sixty percent local content. To achieve results of the objective of the measure it requires multisectoral approach by government at which all relevant ministries and agencies dealing with media, culture , copyright , education and information work together.
The Main feature of the policy debates is the creative economy. The creative economy policy debates and measures have been focuseed on how to bridge culture with technoloy to add to the value chain of cultural expressions. The issue is focuseed on commercialization of cultural expressions to become trading items and services with higher revenues that the traditional cultural expressions. The debate as to whether the creative economy concept refers to culture linking with technology has been disputed by some of the stakeholders who feel that the creative economy is broader that the cultural creativity . Linking Culture with technology has brought about new ways of thinking in regard to protection of copyright. It has been observed that protection of copyright on a digital environment is a complex issues and monitoring use of community 's cultural expressions digitally to ensure compensation will require efforts of more that one government agency.
Among the results expected from implementation of the measure include ; Enhancement and enjoyment of local cultural expressions, Improvement of cultural exchange through audiovisual aids, Improvement of access to national diverse cultural expressions, New opportunities for market access for cultural goods and services, Digital distribution of cultural expressions , increase of local cultural content on media , balanced airing of local and foreign cultural expressions , enhancement of intellectual property rights on new media , strengthening of copyright protection laws and enforcement on the digital space and enhanced creativity
The Creative economy debates and policy frameworks and initiative have in the last two years recieved government support which allocated an initial budget of kenya shilling fifty million equivalent of five hunderd thousand dollars to support policy. Non governmental organizations especially civil society in the last two yeras have attracted sponsorship by various partners to implement policy discussion forums.