Episode 183 - From Kenya to Unilever’s Global Stage: The Making of Tito Alai | Part 1

Episode 183 - From Kenya to Unilever’s Global Stage: The Making of Tito Alai | Part 1

From Pure Digital Passion with Moses Kemibaro by Moses Kemibaro

July 11, 2026 · 59 min · Episode 183

About this episode

The episode covers Tito Alai's early life and career beginnings at Unilever.

I had initially planned to record one Pure Digital Passion Podcast conversation with Tito Alai. We ended up recording three. By the end of this first session, we had only managed to cover Tito’s early life, education, rise through East African Industries—now Unilever—and his move to London for international strategic responsibilities. We had not yet reached Africa Online, Kodak, Celtel, Celpay, One Network, Zain, Mimi Africa, Afreximbank or his current work around African digital identities. That is the scale of Tito’s story. In Part 1, we begin in Kirinyaga, where Tito was born while his father, then a District Commissioner, was away responding to a rogue-elephant incident. We move to his childhood on a farm in Muhoroni, boarding school from the age of six and his years at Lenana School, where he embraced academics, sport, leadership and extracurricular life. Tito explains why he chose humanities despite excelling in mathematics and the sciences, how the death of his father changed the period immediately before university, and why he briefly dropped out of the University of Nairobi because he felt insufficiently challenged. The second half of the conversation traces his entry…

People in this episode

Host: Moses Kemibaro

Guest: Tito Alai

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Unilever, East African Industries, University of Nairobi, Coca-Cola, Afreximbank, Kodak, Celtel, Celpay, One Network, Zain

Places: Kenya, Kirinyaga, Muhoroni, London

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