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The Daily Savannah

Friday, 2 October 2026 Edition Nº 34

From yesterday, no Kenyan phone can opt out of a government emergency alert — the Communications Authority has ordered every operator to push El Niño warnings past Do Not Disturb.

Featured · Government

Emergency SMS will now override Do Not Disturb

The CA has directed Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom Kenya and Jamii Telecommunications to deliver government-authorised emergency alerts to every active subscriber, overriding DND settings and prior opt-outs, with effect from 1 October. Messages come through government-designated platforms including short code 1590 and require official authorisation; the carve-out covers approved emergency preparedness, disaster and El Niño messages only, and ordinary commercial SMS stays subject to consent as before. The authority grounded the order in operators' own licence obligations to carry public information during major disasters when directed. Today's National Early Warning System simulation is the first live test, with operators required to show readiness beforehand. The design question worth watching is discipline: a channel nobody can mute is valuable exactly as long as it is used sparingly.

Source: TechTrends KE · Techweez

A car driving through a flooded street — the alert carve-out covers El Niño and disaster warnings
AI

Safaricom's AI Pay reads the receipt so you don't type the PayBill

Photograph a receipt — printed or handwritten — and the app extracts the Till or PayBill number and the amount and fills the payment screen; the customer still confirms with a PIN or fingerprint. Handling handwriting is the part that matters in a market where a great many small businesses still write invoices out by hand, and it removes the step where a mistyped digit sends money to a stranger. It sits inside the M-PESA experience on My OneApp, now past 7 million downloads. Group CTO James Maitai: "The system can process the receipt, identify the relevant details, and determine the amount that needs to be paid." Faint or unclear receipts will still need typing.

Techweez

SKILLS

Airtel Money puts KSh37 million into two Marigat schools

Working with ChildFund, Airtel Money Kenya is funding classrooms, sanitation and water systems worth KSh37 million across two schools in Marigat, Baringo. It is corporate philanthropy rather than product news, and worth noting for the timing more than the cheque: it lands in the same week the parent's mobile money arm was valued at $7 billion on the London market, in an offer Kenyan retail investors were not permitted to join.

TechTrends KE

4operators ordered to bypass DND
1590the government alert short code
7MMy OneApp downloads
KSh37MAirtel Money's Marigat school funding
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