POLICY
Twelve deals, little paper: an audit of Kenya's Big Tech engagements
The Elephant counts at least 12 publicly documented government engagements with major technology companies since 2023 — Meta, Microsoft, AWS, Google, TikTok and Starlink among them — and finds the actual agreements largely hidden from public and parliamentary scrutiny. The through-line is leverage: after courts ruled against Meta in the Sama content-moderation cases in September 2024, the Business Laws (Amendment) Bill appeared that November with new outsourcing rules, and President Ruto's own account — "Now I can report to you that we have changed the law" — followed a direct approach from Sama. Elsewhere the piece flags farmer data moving to foreign cloud servers under the Microsoft agriculture partnership and August's Konza–AWS cloud MOU as deals whose terms nobody outside the room has read.
The Elephant
STARTUPS
A dialysis clinic in a shipping container reaches the Africa Prize final
Two of the four finalists for the Royal Academy of Engineering's 2026 Africa Prize are Kenyan, and both work in health. Naom Monari's Renal Roads runs a mobile dialysis service out of a retrofitted shipping container — four machines, its own water treatment, solar power — visiting about three communities a week and delivering around 400 sessions a month, billed through the national health insurance scheme. Dr Alice Muhuhu's MoyoECG is an AI-backed wearable cardiac monitor that lets frontline health workers screen for more than 50 heart conditions, cutting ECG interpretation from about 30 minutes to under five. The winner takes £50,000 and the runners-up £10,000 each, decided in Johannesburg on 28 October.
TechTrends KE
FINTECH
I&M opens 25,000 accounts a month without a paper form
The bank now opens 85% of retail accounts digitally — a national ID, a smartphone and about five minutes — and says 90% of its customers are digitally active, up from 80% a year earlier. It has also kept transfers to M-PESA and Airtel Money free while most competitors quietly reinstated the fees they waived during COVID. The credit engine this feeds is getting real: about KSh700 million in digital short-term loans disbursed in Kenya, scored on income proxies and in-app behaviour, and roughly TZS 700 billion through the Kamilisha overdraft service in Tanzania, all run on centralised infrastructure managed from Nairobi across five markets.
TechTrends KE
GADGETS
Samsung Care+ makes a cracked screen a KSh3,139 problem
Samsung is rolling Care+ out across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia: one accidental screen repair with genuine parts in the first 12 months, for Galaxy phones registered within 30 days of purchase. The Kenyan pricing is the story — KSh3,139 for older A-series, KSh3,923 for newer ones, KSh7,847 for S-series and KSh15,693 for foldables, against open-market repairs that routinely run KSh15,000 to over KSh30,000. The catch: it applies to selected models with the 24-month warranty, and the newest Fold and Flip are not yet covered locally.
TechTrends KE
GOVERNMENT
Tourism wants to be found where travellers actually decide
Tourism CS Rebecca Miano's argument is that the booking decision has moved to the phone, so Kenya's products must be "visible, accessible and relevant in the digital spaces" where it happens. The tools named: the Safari Live partnership with Wildlife Earth streaming Kenyan wildlife to international audiences, the Tembea Kenya platform for domestic travel, AI-assisted trip planning, and creators recruited as ambassadors. The regional bet is Eldoret — fresh city status, the North Rift's sporting heritage, and the 2029 World Athletics Championships as the deadline to build sports tourism around.
TechTrends KE
