Ai Kenya Breakfast Summit : Shaping AI in Africa

On January 29, 2025, Ai Kenya held its first summit, the Ai Kenya Breakfast Summit, themed “Transformative AI: From Efficiency Gains to Strategic Advantage”. The summit brought together over 160 delegates from more than 150 organizations spanning East Africa, with 45% of attendees being C-suite executives. This underscored the event’s impact in boardrooms and on the broader AI ecosystem.

To relive the energy, networking, and thought leadership that defined the event, do watch the highlight video below of the Ai Kenya Breakfast Summit.

Recap of the Inaugural Breakfast Summit:

Setting the tone to the event was a keynote by Juliana Rotich, a tech entrepreneur who has been in the tech forefront for years. She captured the essence of technology in the present world: a tool of both boundless opportunities for positive advancement and significant risks for harm. She urged attendees to become solutions to their problems, focusing on user experience and utility while acknowledging the responsibility that comes with building technology. This puts emphasis on incorporating technology-based tools with deliberate thoughtfulness, considering that technology does not exist outside of the construct of society. Her talk revolved around public policy and technology, underscoring the importance of iteration, infinite learning, and the need for collaborative AI models that ringfence data while addressing real societal challenges.

Juliana highlighted that technology lowers entrepreneurship costs and levels the playing field, using MPESA as a prime example of Kenyan innovation. She reinforced the need to create enterprises that generate jobs and foster innovation.

“Being a smart nation is not about flaunting glitzy technology, but applying technology to solve real problems.” – Juliana Rotich

AI Use Cases Across Industries:

Oscar Limoke, CEO of Pawa IT Solutions talked about leveraging AI for effective customer engagement in contact center operations. If you ever wondered about how the customer journey experience can be shaped by AI, then you must have loved his presentation. He humorously questioned, “Are you really a smart technology company if you’re still using spreadsheets for data analytics? I mean, Power BI exists!”

He noted that customers prefer speaking to humans rather than navigating automated systems, explaining how Google Contact Centre as a Service enables businesses to use AI-driven chatbots while ensuring seamless escalation to human agents when needed.

Oscar’s presentation emphasised on the need for customers to feel valued and the fact that the customer is king. Imagine a customer speaking in Swahili, or perhaps Kenyanese, a localized Kenyan slang language, and an AI agent on the other side of the line is instantly able to respond using the correct language. This is a scenario of what an AI co-opted customer experience would look like. Indeed, engagement is key in enabling businesses to understand and engage proactively with customers and the businesses. Moreover, with AI, conversations are processed much quicker and insights generated, that are key in decision making

Priscilla Wakarera, CEO of Rhea Soil Health and a Biotechnologist, talked about building a soil health AI startup. She highlighted key challenges, including limited access to open-source agricultural data and farmers’ resistance to change. To overcome these barriers, her company integrates AI-powered solutions with farmer training at agrovets, fostering trust and adoption. In agriculture, time matters, as efficient systems lead to faster turnaround times hence saving costs and improves on yield production. Her solution is a soil health management company leveraging sensor technology, and Machine Learning to analyse soil nutritional data and provide smallholder farmers with tailored actionable insights on their inputs. This enables farmers to optimize resources and minimize environmental impact. Priscilla emphasized the importance of practicality over aesthetics, stating, “Don’t be sexy, be functional.”

Ngugi Karega, CEO of Skizaa AI, who interestingly is also a trained monk, presented a deck titled “Frost and Defrost”, an analogy involving 3 CEO personas navigating the business world, with a focus on data and AI. His company has built a multi agent architectural system that helps reduce the cost of deploying AI significantly. Through this, his company uses existing models without getting charged with the heavy costs that are associated with them. He pointed out that optimizing workflows with AI is essential for maximizing efficiency and reducing operational costs in the long run.

The presentations segued into a panel discussion moderated by Mbugua Njihia (Venture Builder at Gruppo Potente) that brought together Oscar Limoke, Priscilla Wakarera, and Ngugi Karega.

The conversation then turned to the critical infrastructure needed to support these innovations. Denson Ngumo, CTO at Angani, took us behind the scenes, explaining the complex web of hardware, software, and systems required for AI.

He explained that Kenya has a strong foundation with the most data centres in East Africa, renewable energy and extensive fibre optic cable networks. He emphasized that local cloud providers are key for data sovereignty, cost efficiency and providing support. Ngumo also shared some real use cases, such as Angani’s new CCTV analytics product, that use neural networks in analysis. A game changer.

Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Alfred Ongere, CEO Ai Kenya

In closing off the event, Alfred highlighted the fact that 2025 will be a transformative year, given the breakthroughs being experienced by different companies.

He further went on to share Guiding Principles for Transformative Success for AI in 2025:

• Focus on signals, not noise. Identify valuable AI tools and prioritize them.
• Optimize workflows. Leverage AI to streamline business operations.
• Maximize open-source models. Reduce costs and improve accessibility.
• Agentic AI. Invest in affordable and scalable AI solutions.
• Invest in evaluation skills. Understanding AI performance will be key to driving innovation.

As the curtains closed on the inaugural breakfast summit, delegates shared their experiences and insights, and it became clear that collaboration and innovation are essential for harnessing AI’s full potential to drive growth and create

Key Takeaways From The Breakfast Summit:

• AI must be practical. Focus on solutions that prioritize functionality over aesthetics.

• AI should be localized. Oscar Limoke highlighted the importance of AI solutions that cater to local languages and cultural nuances.

• AI should be integrated into business strategies to drive competitive advantage and economic growth.

• Collaboration is essential. Partnerships between businesses, innovators, and policymakers are critical for AI’s success in Kenya and beyond.

The event concluded with a group photo followed by a networking session, where leaders and managers sparked new connections, partnerships and deals.

The first edition of the Ai Kenya breakfast summit was made successful through the generous support of Angani and technology TODAY, two companies driving innovation in AI infrastructure and digital transformation across Africa.

Angani is East Africa’s largest and fastest-growing cloud service provider, transforming businesses across finance, telecom, retail, and healthcare with innovative cloud solutions. From Disaster Recovery to VoD platforms, and AI-powered CCTV Video Analytics, they deliver cutting-edge solutions that empower organizations to thrive.

technology TODAY is a premier provider of cutting-edge IT solutions in Kenya with over 30 years of industry experience. As a HP Amplify Partner, Dell Technologies Gold Partner, and Lenovo Platinum Partner, they bring unparalleled expertise and access to best-in-class IT products and solutions. From high-performance IT equipment to enterprise-grade networking infrastructure, Technology TODAY empowers businesses with reliable, future-ready technology. With a strong commitment to customer success, their end-to-end support ensures smooth integration, troubleshooting, and ongoing technical assistance.

What Lies Ahead?

If you missed the inaugural breakfast summit, and are interested in being a part of the conversation around AI, worry not. Be on the lookout for Ai Kenya’s next event in April 2025, and get an opportunity to network with like minded AI leaders.

Do not forget to sign up to stay updated on our events and work on our linktree page.

— Article Authors : Wairimu Maringa & Brian Oballa

— Editor : Alfred Ongere