kenya
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GRIFFIN Global makes the handoff work
A software firm built between the United States and East Africa has a practical pitch: better delivery starts with how you organize the people doing it.
Sama puts people inside the machine
Before AI can recognize a shoe, a tomato, or a dangerous mistake, someone has to teach it what to see. Sama built a business around those people - and a promise that their work could change their lives.
Kenya’s next startup should not need a Nairobi postcode
The Association of Countrywide Innovation Hubs connects Kenya’s regional hubs to training, partners and opportunity. Its most useful innovation may be making distance matter less.
Green Generation Initiative: A forest you can eat
A shortage of seedlings helped Elizabeth Wathuti start GGI. Now the Kenyan nonprofit connects tree growing, school meals and community livelihoods - with a chicken coop making a surprisingly persuasive argument.
iHUB Nairobi: The business of making luck
A foosball table could introduce two founders. Keeping the doors open required a business model. Inside the Nairobi hub that learned to put a price, a partner and a pilot behind a promising idea.
SHONA Wants Better Businesses, Not Better Pitches
In East Africa's crowded accelerator market, SHONA has built its case around an unfashionable idea: make the company work before polishing the pitch. Its wager combines long-horizon coaching, local networks, and loans designed for the awkward middle between microcredit and venture capital.
ASSEK backs the people behind Kenya’s startups
Kenya has incubators, accelerators and business coaches. ASSEK’s bet is that helping them work better together can reach further than another startup programme.
LakeHub is building a tech career that starts in Kisumu
It began with Saturday meetups and discounted tea. Now LakeHub connects young Kenyans to software training, employers and a new set of problems out on the farm.
Eden Care Medical
Eden Care Medical is a licensed digital health insurer building the claims and distribution infrastructure that modernizes health insurance in Africa. Starting in Rwanda and expanding into Kenya, it sells group health cover to employers and their staff, then runs the whole value chain - HR admin portal, an employee app for navigating care and wellness, and digital tools for hospitals and clinics - to cut the cost of insurance in a market where operating costs run 2.2x the global average and penetration sits near 0.2%.
Karsa
Karsa is a stablecoin neobank that gives people in emerging markets a global dollar account. Users can deposit local currency, save in dollar-denominated stablecoins, receive international payments, cash out to local banks, and spend abroad with a card - without needing a traditional US bank or any crypto knowledge. The product hides the complexity of self-custody wallets and a peer-to-peer stablecoin network behind a familiar banking interface, targeting the roughly one billion people who live under high inflation and capital controls.
Sanifu
Sanifu (formerly Patika, YC S22) is a Nairobi-based company whose AI reads sales orders arriving by email, WhatsApp, PDF and even handwritten notes, then enters them straight into a manufacturer's ERP system. It cuts order-processing time from 5-10 minutes to under 30 seconds and targets the roughly 180,000 manufacturers and distributors across Africa still keying orders in by hand.
Workpay
Workpay is a Nairobi-based HR and payroll software company that helps local and global businesses hire, pay, and manage employees and contractors across Africa. Its cloud platform combines payroll processing, time and attendance, leave, expenses, benefits, and Employer of Record (EOR) services so companies can run compliant payroll in local currency without setting up a legal entity in each country. Founded in 2019 out of an earlier product called TozzaPlus, the Y Combinator-backed startup serves more than 1,000 companies and processes over $200 million in payroll value a year.
Untold
Untold, formerly CARE for AIDS, is an Atlanta-based faith-driven nonprofit that runs a nine-month, church-based program helping HIV-positive men and women across East and Southern Africa build a life beyond AIDS. Working through local churches with indigenous staff, its integrated model addresses physical, spiritual, emotional, and economic health at once - producing 97% viral suppression among clients and more than 50,000 program graduates.