● place
Kenia (nacional, vía red Safaricom)
7 practices
0local
0subnational
6national
1systemic
Practices in Kenia (nacional, vía red Safaricom)
iCow (Green Dreams Tech)Mobile phone-based farming platform designed for basic phones without internet, delivering agricultural and livestock knowledge via SMS, livestock management reminders, a virtual marketplace (Soko) and expert lookup. It was born out of an Apps4Africa hackathon and operates via Safaricom (*285#). Since ~2019-2022 the organization pivoted to regenerative agriculture and soil health under iCow Regen Academy; the original SMS/Soko product is largely historical.Shamba Shape Up (Mediae)Makeover-format television series (edutainment) produced by The Mediae Company that visits smallholder farms in Kenya and improves them on the spot with experts, demonstrating soil fertility, animal health, agronomy and climate adaptation practices. It airs on Citizen TV with an audience of millions of weekly viewers in East Africa.Twiga FoodsB2B e-commerce and food logistics platform founded in 2014 that connects small producers with urban retailers (dukas) in Kenya, paying farmers more than middlemen do and settling payments via mobile money. After multiple rounds of layoffs (2022-2024), in May-June 2025 it cut more than 300 jobs, created a holding company (NewCo) and temporarily suspended its operations in Nairobi (2 months, with resumption expected around August 2025) to relocate its hub and pivot to an asset-light FMCG model.Maji Milele prepaid water ATMs (Kenia)A system of prepaid water meters and water ATMs deployed with water service providers (WSPs) and community water points in Kenya. Users load credit via M-Pesa or NFC cards and the meter dispenses water by the liter, eliminating the manual fee collector and increasing revenue collection. It started in Kajiado county and today operates in more than 25 counties; in the Bubisa project (Marsabit) the water point's daily revenue grew by more than 520%. Maji Milele is the Kenyan operation of Water Forever International (Netherlands).M-PESA (mobile money)Mobile money service launched by Safaricom in 2007 that allows sending, receiving, storing and paying money from a basic phone via an agent network, without a bank account. It grew out of a pilot funded by DFID (Financial Deepening Challenge Fund) and scaled into national financial infrastructure. Suri and Jack 2016 document that it lifted ~194,000 households out of poverty (2% of Kenyan households), with ~185,000 women moving from farming to business.Unregulated digital credit in Kenya (lending apps: Okash, Opesa and similar)A wave of digital microcredit apps that between ~2016 and 2022 offered instant loans via mobile, presented as financial inclusion. They led to massive over-indebtedness: digital credit accounted for 90% of credit bureau listings, households skipping meals, and abusive collection practices (debt shaming). In March 2022 the CBK gazetted the Digital Credit Providers Regulations and forced lenders to get licensed or shut down; by Sep 2025 only 153 of more than 700 applicants had a license, and neither Okash nor Opesa appears in the directory.Sauti za Wananchi Kenya (Twaweza)Africa's first nationally representative mobile phone survey panel applied in Kenya, operated by Twaweza East Africa. ~2,000 citizens, randomly sampled and equipped with phones and solar chargers to include poor or off-grid households, are interviewed monthly about public services, governance and priorities. The open citizen data is turned into briefs that inform ministries, oversight bodies and the press.