Our next destination after visiting Google headquarters was Facebook, now Meta.
We were not lucky to get in because of a flight delay. We drove around the buildings, one with a forest on the roof.
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The buildings are not as iconic as Google’s, uniformly built with three floors. A big Meta logo on the front and Sun Microsystems on the back is a major tourist attraction and is guarded.
Meta is located on Hacker Street! Like Google workers, staff here are also facilitated with transport and food.
How do we expect hungry and tired workers to spawn patents? Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has practical applications.
I hope our employers are listening. Our next visit was to Stanford University. Like the other universities cited last week, from New England to the Pacific Rim, there is no gate and no fence.
And none asked for our IDs. We saw no security guards. We got into the main quad, dating back to 1885.
One fascinating building is the memorial church built by the founders of the university in honour of their son, who died aged 15; the university bears his name.
There is no signboard for the university! The reason is simple: the university is an idea, not a place.
An S written using flowers is what indicates you are at Stanford. The university’s name only appears next to a small QR code to help you find restrooms.
It seems the university was in recess, and only tourists were around. I saw no grandiose buildings at Stanford, except Hoover Tower, which houses the Hoover Institution. Check who Herbert Hoover was.
Stanford and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are complemented by the University of California system, with leading institutions like the University of California at Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Irvine, among others.
A few questions arise. For instance, why would all Apple Inc, Google, Facebook and other major firms, plus an elite university like Stanford, be in the same locale?
Innovation thrives in an ecosystem where cross-breeding of ideas is easy, where success begets success.
There must be idea generators or innovators. These are usually researchers in universities and institutes.
Add a positive culture that values freedom, not overcontrol and a supportive government. Such an ecosystem is espoused by California’s Silicon Valley, which has evolved organically over time.
Silicon Valley, which covers only 4,796 square kilometres, is more of an idea than a place. What’s missing in our Silicon Savanah? Will there be free food in Konza?
The ecosystem has been productive; some of the companies spawned by Stanford include HP, Google, Cisco, Nike, PayPal, and Nvidia, among others. Check for other universities.
We have opened universities in almost every county. Are they part of an innovation ecosystem, or will they start one?
We could have visited another icon of Silicon Valley, Apple Inc. We only saw the circular building from the air, and time was not on our side.
Why bother with these firms? Why should they excite us more than “wantam” or “tutam?” Let us compare them with our GDP.
We start with market capitalisation – how much a firm would be worth if put to the market today. Please take a glass of water before reading on.
Google’s market capitalisation as of September 15, 2025 was $ 2.91 trillion(Sh378 trillion). The share price was $231.38 (Sh30,000) a share. Apple’s capitalisation on the same date was $3.47 trillion (Sh451 trillion), with the share price at $234.07 (Sh30,430).
Meta trades as Meta Platforms Inc because of the many platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
Its share price was $755.59 (Sh98,227) with a market capitalisation of $1.90 trillion (Sh247 trillion).
These numbers are mind-boggling. Kenya’s GDP in 2025 is expected to be $132 billion (Sh17.6 trillion). Google’s market value is 21 times our GDP. Compare our GDP with the rest.
Money from these firms comes from innovations – new products and new services. That requires investment in research and development.
Do we invest enough in R&D and curiosity? Do we allow experimentation and failure? Do we attract venture capitalists?
It’s more than money; Silicon Valley attracts and nurtures brains from all over the world, and a walk through Google Campus supports that.
We are not good at taking care of our brains, including paying them. Do we have any schools for the gifted? How do we treat very intelligent students in our universities and schools? How will Competency-Based Education (CBE) take care of them? Why are dons on the streets?
We could argue that we lacked coal or iron in the industrial age. We only need brains for the Artificial Intelligence AI revolution.
What is Google or Meta’s key asset? Software requires our brains more than physical infrastructure. And we have good brains in this country, including Gen Z.
Institutions and companies in Silicon Valley have a global reach and see the world as their marketplace, not their village or hamlet.
Don’t we use Google and Meta daily? Which Kenyan product or service has a global reach like Meta or Facebook?
How many of our businesses, beyond Safaricom, make money 24 hours a day, where the sun never sets?
How many have a captive market like WhatsApp? Don’t our youngsters skip lunch to ensure they have bundles?
I worry that we are forever playing catch-up. Innovations come in waves; you miss one, you wait for a generation.
Computers came in the 1970s, the Internet in the early 2000s and now AI. Shall we miss on AI too?
Where is our Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT or DeepSeek? The next wave could be in 2050. Should that not jolt us into action?
Finally, can we turn Nyandarua’s Happy Valley into a Silicon Valley? That is the best way to atone for the sins of those who made this valley infamous in the roaring 20s.
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By XN Iraki