Ai Kenya began as a grassroots project in 2017. The group was a small group that wanted to demystify artificial intelligent (AI) in order to help local developers and students. It’s now a full-blown AI company with clients, policy influence and a growing list of services. Alfred Ongere is the CEO. He recently quit his day job as a local neobank and fintech to focus full-time on the company.
This shift is important. The race to build tools and shape the narrative is on as governments draft national AI strategies, and global firms look to outsource AI-related work to African teams. AI Kenya wants in on both.
What does Ai Kenya do?
Ongere described there Kenya as a “360 Degree AI Agency” that covers both the business and policy sides of AI. This includes corporate training, AI Summits, Hackathons, readiness assessment, software development, advisory services, and more. The idea is to provide organisations with something practical and not just theoretical to help them figure out where to begin. He said that “Ai Kenya is a for-profit business.” “Our community program is CSR we provide to help contribute towards the economic development and technological advancement of the country.” No outside investors. No grants.
Ongere told my two weeks ago, “So far, it’s mostly self funded.” “I worked on Ai Kenya half-time until October last year. Now, I am working full-time on Ai Kenya and focused on growing the team.
Ongere does not rush to raise venture capital. He is instead betting on client revenue as a way to fuel the next stage of growth. He told me that he wanted to prove that AI services could be a viable market in this country. “If we get it right, we can duplicate it beyond Kenya.”
This is where things get interesting. Most African AI startups either are research labs looking for grants or early-stage companies seeking global scale. Ai Kenya does not quite fit into that mould. It is not trying to build ChatGPT. Instead, it is trying help businesses understand what AI could do for them and then build it together. This includes events aimed at businesses, such as the AI Business Breakfast Summits.
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We want more businesses to experiment and grow their AI use, and break down the barriers that currently exist. “We provide well-curated spaces and discussions that speak a lingo that they can understand.”
Ongere believes that Kenya’s private industry is ready for this kind of support. And not just from flashy presentation decks but from people that have been in the ecosystem for many years. “The more businesses that use AI correctly, without making many errors and mistakes, the more the economy will grow,” he said.
Shaping AI Policy
Ai Kenya doesn’t ignore the policy side. According to Ongere the team contributed to Kenya’s newly released National AI Strategy under the Ministry of ICT. In 2024, the team also helped to push back against a proposed Robotics and AI Society Bill (19459018) that critics claim lacked public involvement. Ongere’s team joined others in calling for an inclusive process.
We collaborate with different institutions including the government, NGOs and professional bodies. He said that Ai Kenya plays an active role in policy, regulatory, and strategy discussions relating to AI.
Ai Kenya, on the private sector, has completed commissioned work for Microsoft. Uber, McKinsey and Insight2Impact are among others. Microsoft supported its podcast in order to support ecosystem mapping. It has hosted hackathons and townhalls for a number of partners, including the Pulitzer Centre for Sustainable Development Data and Global Partnerships for Sustainable Development Data. Ai Kenya’s work has a regional flavor. Ongere’s focus is on East Africa, even though Kenya remains his main priority. He’s cautious. “Our primary focus is Kenya. We will expand to other countries after we achieve the different programmatic milestones and structural milestones that we would like.”
This structure, he says must be multisectoral. Ai Kenya doesn’t just work with fintechs and healthtechs. It will work in any sector that has a useful AI application. Sometimes, it even creates new ones. A recent townhall focused on the rights and lives of data workers. Most of them are invisible to global supply chains, but essential for training machine learning models.
Ai Kenya does not seem to be chasing hype or size. Its work seems to be based on training teams, advising businesses, and shaping policies.
But the global connection is still present. Ai Kenya has attended events such as GITEX Global in Dubai and Elevate Festival, Austria, as well as Deep Learning Indaba. Ongere says Ai Kenya does not belong to a single coalition, but remains connected by contributing where there is alignment.
The bet at the heart of it all is that African businesses don’t require more hype. They need people to translate AI into real results. What’s next then? “We have empowered over 10,000 people through our work in the last seven years. Sustainability is the key to empowering more people in the next stage. “So, helping organizations and individuals to achieve more in AI matters with sustainability at its core”, he concluded.
