Fire from Friction For the African Society of Cambridge University, and its Africa Together Conference, 2026. Before I am permitted to say anything else, there is an apology I owe. So let me pay it before I have earned the right to your patience. In that optimism which precedes all labour — in which all…
Thirty per cent. That was the share of substantive Kenyan equity that any company providing ICT services in Kenya was required to maintain. This was the only regulatory instrument that structurally ensured Kenyan ownership in the technology sector. On 22 August 2023, the Cabinet Secretary for ICT signed Gazette Notice No. 11079, deleting the provision…
Building Legal AI in Kenya This essay was first published at HAKI In May 2025, a court submission in Kenya was found to contain legal citations that did not exist. Cases fabricated whole cloth. Statutes that had never been enacted. Arguments dressed in the language of law but anchored to nothing. The Judiciary’s Committee on…
What Time Is It? For the African Society of Cambridge University, and its Africa Together Conference, 2026. There is a three-hour difference between Nairobi and Cambridge. Sometimes it is two hours, but that’s only because these Northerners are convinced that they can sully the seasons to save time by setting their clocks back and forth….
First published in the Alliance High School Centenary Magazine, on 1st March, 2026. My mother bought the uniform two sizes too large. The consensus among mothers, arrived at through the kind of research that fathers know little about, was that boys in boarding school swell. Something about what they are fed there. So, she bought…
Doing AI Right in Africa This essay was first published at HAKI My first essay in this series argued that Africa’s position in the AI revolution is one that offers strategic choice. I posed that Africa’s lateness allows it to choose better, and that its diversity and polycentric structure can be deployed as leverage. All…
AI in Africa This essay was first published at HAKI. Conventional narratives position Africa as perpetually behind, always scrambling to catch up while real progress happens elsewhere. This framing is wrong. Africa’s position outside conventional currents of success need not always be a disadvantage. Sometimes, it is a strategic asset to be deployed. Africa is…
The alarm rings. You surface. It’s getting louder. You feel for your phone to silence it, but your hand knocks it to the floor. Shit. It rattles, insistent, mechanical. You must snooze it. No, you must stop it, once and for all. Reluctant to part with the warm embrace of your bed, you crane a…
THE RECEIPTS When I started writing “IT’S A TRAP“, the Data Sharing Agreement had not yet been disclosed. I analysed The Framework in isolation, and reported the issues I found. These included jurisdictional limits in relying solely on the laws of Kenya, ethical issues around training AI models on sovereign data, the potential of permanent…