Episode 182 - Akili AI’s Simon Bransfield-Garth & Shikoli Makatiani Unpack Practical AI For Businesses In Kenya

Episode 182 - Akili AI’s Simon Bransfield-Garth & Shikoli Makatiani Unpack Practical AI For Businesses In Kenya

From Pure Digital Passion with Moses Kemibaro by Moses Kemibaro

July 6, 2026 · 56 min · Episode 182

About this episode

The episode discusses practical applications of AI in Kenyan businesses with insights from Akili AI's leadership.

In this follow-up episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, I sit down again with Simon Bransfield-Garth, Founder & CEO of Akili AI, this time joined by Shikoli Makatiani, CTO and technical lead at Akili AI. Our first conversation with Simon explored his remarkable journey from working on artificial neural networks at Cambridge in the mid-1980s, to Symbian, mobile security, off-grid solar in Africa, and eventually the founding of Akili AI. This second conversation moves from vision to deployment. We discuss what it really takes to put AI to work inside Kenyan financial services organizations, including banks, cooperatives, microfinance institutions, customer service teams, and regulated business workflows. This is a deeply practical conversation about shadow AI, agentic systems, AI governance, AI readiness, AI risk registers, pain owners, MVP-first deployment, staff training, and why Kenyan and African organizations need to focus less on AI hype and more on measurable business outcomes. Key themes covered: Why many organizations are already using AI even when leadership thinks they are not What “shadow AI” means and why it creates governance and risk exposure Why AI is not…

People in this episode

Host: Moses Kemibaro

Guests: Simon Bransfield-Garth, Shikoli Makatiani

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Akili AI

Places: Kenya, Africa

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