In this conversation recorded during the Rotary Zone 22 Regional Team Learning Seminar in Diani, Kenya, a few weeks ago, I sat down with Rotary International President-Elect Olayinka Hakeem Babalola for a deep and timely discussion about Rotary, leadership, emotional reconnection, impact, and Africa’s role in the organization’s future.

For those who may not know Rotary closely, Rotary International is a global network of community leaders and professionals who volunteer their skills and resources to solve social issues. With about 1.2 million members in more than 45,000 clubs across over 200 countries, Rotary and its charitable arm, The Rotary Foundation, have invested billions of dollars into sustainable, community-driven humanitarian projects. Founded in Chicago in 1905 by Paul Harris, Rotary’s mission is to bring together business and professional leaders to provide humanitarian service, promote high ethical standards, and advance goodwill and peace around the world.

In our conversation, Yinka shares how his Rotary journey began as a Rotaractor in Nigeria, why Rotary must move beyond transactional membership to emotional connection, and why the real measure of service is lasting impact. We also explore Rotary’s polio eradication legacy, the importance of storytelling in attracting new members, and why Africa’s youth, energy, and urgent development needs make it central to Rotary’s next chapter.

This conversation feels especially timely as Yinka is installed in about week at the Rotary International Convention today in Taipei, Taiwan, as Rotary International’s second ever President from Africa, marking a historic moment for Rotary in Africa and globally.

If you care about leadership, service, community impact, and how large organizations stay relevant in changing times, this is a conversation worth your time.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:05 What Rotary is and why this moment matters

02:10 Yinka’s Rotary journey from Rotaract to Rotary International President-Elect

05:10 Emotional reconnection to Rotary

08:10 Change versus lasting impact

11:10 Rotary’s polio eradication legacy

14:10 Africa’s role in Rotary’s future

18:10 Membership, inclusion, and growth

22:10 Leadership, relevance, and what comes next

25:00 Closing reflections

In this recent episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, I sat down with Sven De Cauter, CEO of Teleperformance (TP) Kenya and Nigeria, for a revealing conversation about the growth of one of Kenya’s most remarkable digital business services operations. From 60 employees in 2020 to over 2,500 today, TP Kenya has become a significant case study in what is possible when global scale meets local talent, operational discipline, and long-term ambition.Sven shares his journey from Belgium to the UK, Tanzania, Barcelona, and eventually Nairobi, where he came in to help build a business that now serves clients across 170 markets and 21 languages. We discuss why Kenya was chosen, what he learned from TP’s Barcelona multilingual hub, why Mombasa became part of the company’s footprint, and how AI is reshaping the future of customer service and BPO.This conversation goes beyond headcount and office locations. We also talk about impact sourcing, youth employment, infrastructure, GDPR adequacy, the EU-Kenya Digital Dialogue, and what Kenya must do if it wants to become a serious global destination for digital business services. Sven is candid about both the opportunities and the gaps, and his perspective is especially valuable because it comes from someone who has built across markets and understands what scale really requires.Chapters0:00 Introduction and why this conversation matters2:19 Sven’s background and the road to Nairobi6:16 What TP is and how it evolved globally8:01 Why Kenya, and how the move happened10:52 Why Kenya’s talent pipeline matters13:26 Soft skills, onboarding, and customer service readiness15:17 The growth story from 60 to 2,500 employees19:55 Why Mombasa became part of the operation23:17 Why Two Rivers and TRIFIC made strategic sense28:14 AI, emotional intelligence, and the future of BPO31:07 Green energy, GDPR, and Kenya’s competitive edge33:56 The 10,000-jobs ambition35:26 Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and the pan-African view39:01 Infrastructure, latency, and cost42:32 Kenya’s culture of learning and adaptability48:58 Changing lives through impact sourcing51:15 Advice for young people entering the industry55:55 Closing remarks and where to find TP

In this episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, I sat down with Denis Bundi, a Kenyan-born AI-Native business builder, engineer, and founder of Agentyc, DBX Engine, and ClawFolks, to unpack an extraordinary journey from Nairobi to Houston, Rice University, Texas Instruments, Google, Microsoft, and finally back home to Kenya. We talk about the evolution of computing, the rise of agentic AI, why infrastructure matters more than hype, and what Kenya and Africa must do to avoid being left behind in the next era of technology.Denis also shares practical lessons from building at the frontier of AI, from working on enterprise systems and cloud partnerships to now helping teams deploy AI agents that can check inboxes, calendars, CRMs, and Slack, and take action on behalf of users. This is a conversation about systems thinking, engineering quality, entrepreneurship, and the urgent need for Africa to build, not just consume, the future of AI.Chapters0:00 Intro and why this conversation matters2:37 Denis Bundi’s background and journey from Kenya to the US9:34 Rice University, engineering rigor, and early career foundations12:31 Texas Instruments and the hardware/software mindset21:29 BMC, Google Cloud, and the move into customer-facing roles35:00 Returning to Kenya and building for the agentic era42:21 Agentic, DBX Engine, and ClawFolks50:55 Why AI could reshape labor and productivity57:30 Advice for young people in Kenya and Africa1:01:00 Closing reflections and where to find Denis’ work

Kenyans have always loved real estate – from shambas and plots to townhouses and apartments. But the classic model is capital‑intensive, illiquid, and almost always shilling‑denominated. In this episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, we unpack a very different way to own prime Nairobi commercial real estate and earn in US dollars.

The TRIFIC Green USD I‑REIT is an income‑generating Real Estate Investment Trust anchored by the TRIFIC North Tower – an EDGE‑certified Grade A office building located inside a private Special Economic Zone within the wider Two Rivers ecosystem. It is authorized by the Capital Markets Authority as an Income REIT, targeting an 8% annual net yield in USD, paid twice a year, with a minimum entry of just USD 1,000. The unrestricted offer is open to both institutional and retail investors – including the Kenyan Diaspora and chamas – and closes on 12th June 2026.

To unpack what this actually means, I’m was joined by:

• Brenda Mbathi – CEO, TRIFIC SEZ (Two Rivers International Finance & Innovation Centre), which hosts the TRIFIC North Tower inside Kenya’s only private, services‑focused Special Economic Zone.
• Pius Muchiri – CEO, Nabo Capital, the REIT Manager behind the TRIFIC Green USD I‑REIT, describing the vehicle as a “regulated chama” that lets Kenyans pool resources to own institutional‑grade assets.

We dig into:

• What a REIT actually is, in Kenyan terms
• Why the TRIFIC North Tower is fully let, dollar‑denominated, and green‑certified
• How the 8% targeted USD yield is constructed
• Why Centum, TRIFIC, Nabo, NCBA, and a long list of institutional partners matter for governance, transparency, and investor protection
• How retail investors, Diaspora, institutions, and chamas can practically apply – and what happens after the 12th June 2026 closing date

If you’ve ever looked at a big commercial building in Nairobi and thought, “I wish I could own a piece of that,” this is one of the rare moments when that statement is literally true. The bell is expected to ring on the Nairobi Securities Exchange on 23rd June 2026 – but the application window is now just about two weeks away from closing.

Key links

• TRIFIC Green USD I‑REIT information & prospectus: https://trific.co.ke/i-reit
• Online application portal (C&R Group): https://trific.candr.africa/

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Why Kenyans love real estate – and why this conversation is different

02:00 – What is TRIFIC and what is a REIT? Brenda and Pius explain in Kenyan language

07:30 – From plots to a “regulated chama”: How the TRIFIC Green USD I‑REIT works

13:00 – Why traditional property is capital‑intensive and illiquid – and how a listed REIT changes that

18:30 – Inside TRIFIC SEZ: tenants, incentives, and why everything is dollar‑denominated

25:00 – The TRIFIC North Tower: Grade A, fully let, EDGE‑certified, and sitting inside the Two Rivers ecosystem

31:00 – Following the cash flows: how the target 8% USD yield is built – and why the sponsor supports the first two years

38:00 – What this means for retail investors, Diaspora, institutions, and chamas

44:00 – Governance, “regulated chama” vs informal chama, and why structure matters

51:00 – How to apply: brokers, C&R online portal, Safaricom Zidii Trader, and what happens if it’s oversubscribed

56:00 – Timeline: 12 June closing, 15–19 June allocations and CDS credits, 23 June expected NSE listing

59:00 – Final thoughts: why this moment matters for Kenya’s services economy – and why the deadline counts

If this episode helps you think differently about how to earn in hard currency from Kenya’s professional services economy, share it with someone in your personal, chama, or Diaspora circle and visit the links above before 12th June 2026.

Simon Bransfield-Garth was writing his doctoral research on artificial neural networks at Cambridge in 1985 — forty years before most people had heard of AI. In this episode, he traces that journey through Myriad Solutions (a vector processor company that preceded the GPU era), Symbian (the smartphone OS that defined the pre-iPhone world), Cellcrypt (mobile voice security for governments worldwide), and Azuri Technologies (pay-as-you-go solar for 250,000+ households across nine African markets) — and explains how all of it led him to found Akili AI in 2024.

We discuss: why 42% of Kenyan internet users use ChatGPT but most Kenyan boards think they have zero AI in their business; what Akili Snapshot reveals when you run it on a typical EastAfrican financial institution; how Akili AI took a loan processing workflow from two weeks to five minutes; and why Simon believes the biggest risk for Africa is not adopting AI too fast — it is adopting it too slowly.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

03:10 Simon's early career — Cambridge, neural networks, Myriad Solutions

08:35 The Symbian years and the lesson of a platform that missed the shift

12:53 Cellcrypt and the intersection of security and AI

15:36 Azuri Technologies and a decade of building in Africa

19:34 Why Akili AI focuses on financial services

21:22 AI adoption in Kenya — the consumer/corporate gap

27:51 The three things AI actually is — and why governance is the hard part

31:45 Introducing Akili Snapshot and Akili Assured

42:24 What boards do not know about their own AI exposure

46:16 Two scenarios for AI in Africa over the next decade

49:18 Advice for corporate leadership, startups and the general public

55:04 Where to find Akili AI and take the free Snapshot assessment

LINKS

Akili AI website: https://akili-ai.com

Free Akili Snapshot assessment: https://assured.akili-ai.com

Simon Bransfield-Garth on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/simonbransfieldgarth

In this episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, I sit down with Yannick Lefang — Founder & CEO of Kasi Insight, Africa's leading decision intelligence company — for one of the most intellectually rich conversations I've had on this podcast.

Yannick's path to founding Kasi is unlike almost any other founder story in the African technology biased ecosystem. Born in France, raised in Cameroon, trained as an electrical engineer at the University of Ottawa (cum laude), he spent over a decade in financial risk management at TD Bank in Toronto — before joining the International Finance Corporation to advise African banks on risk frameworks across East, Southern, and West Africa. That experience revealed a data gap no one had filled: Africa had no reliable, high-frequency, pan-continental consumer intelligence platform. So in 2017, he built one.

Today, Kasi Insight tracks consumer sentiment, economic signals, brand performance, and retail dynamics across 21 African markets — conducting 120,000+ interviews annually and generating 80 million data points. Their Kasi Index of Consumer Sentiment is distributed on Bloomberg and Refinitiv.

We cover his entire journey — from his grandfather's entrepreneurship lessons in Cameroon, to the Nortel collapse, the Lehman Brothers crisis at TD Bank, the Kasi founding story, and what it actually takes to build Africa's consumer data infrastructure from the ground up:

00:00 — Introduction & background: Who is Yannick Lefang?

03:33 — Growing up in Cameroon: the grandfather who shaped an entrepreneur

10:00 — From medical school expulsion in Benin to engineering in Canada

18:36 — Cultural shock: arriving in Ottawa from Cameroon in January

20:44 — The collaboration lesson that turned his academic career around

24:41 — Career journey: Nortel, E*TRADE, and moving to Toronto's financial industry

30:00 — Inside TD Bank: market risk, capital markets, and the 2008 financial crisis

33:00 — Two weeks into a new TD role — and into the middle of a Lehman Brothers write-down

35:00 — The mentor question that started everything: "If you had a magic stick..."

36:17 — The inflation basket that didn't work, and the pivot to survey data

37:33 — Why Kenya (not Cameroon): the lunch conversation that changed the company

38:51 — The founding logic: Africa was making decisions without a feedback loop

44:57 — The moat: why 9 years of primary data cannot be bought at any price

47:35 — From data company to market research company to decision intelligence company

52:23 — Building the infrastructure: 1,500+ ground-level researchers, country by country

54:33 — Why Kasi built its own platform (Tableau was $2,999 per user)

55:18 — Who the clients are: Bloomberg, Reuters, African banks, FMCGs, NGOs

56:49 — Kasi tracked COVID in Africa before the WHO declared a pandemic

1:00:14 — What separates Kasi from traditional research companies

1:03:44 — The vision: becoming the Bloomberg of Africa

1:06:50 — Advice for young Africans: work ethic, challenging the status quo, and the informal market

1:10:48 — Closing reflections

81% of African PR professionals are using AI — but are they using it right? Mary Njoki breaks it down. In this episode of the Pure Digital Passion podcast, I sit down with Mary Njoki — Founder & CEO of Glass House PR — for a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation covering her founder journey, the story behind the 2026 State of PR in Africa Report, and what the findings really mean for the industry.

Mary founded Glass House PR in 2012 at 23 years old, starting with a modem, a laptop, and a free website template. She finished high school at 16, discovered PR through volunteer work at a Nairobi youth community, and spent the first two years doing pro bono work before landing Facebook as a client in year three.

Thirteen years later, Glass House PR is one of Africa's leading Pan-African communications agencies — and a couple of weeks ago released the 2026 State of PR in Africa Report, the most comprehensive and current examination of the African PR industry to date.

We cover:

1. The real story behind the 81.5% AI adoption figure (it's about depth, not just usage)
2. The shift from SEO to GEO and why organizations with content cultures win the AI era
3. The human premium and what it takes to direct AI rather than be directed by it
4. The Gen Z opportunity, algorithm volatility and the case for owned media
5. AI governance as self-governance, and why Africa's most urgent AI challenge is training LLMs on African data.

Time Stamps

00:15 Introduction and guest welcome

02:07 Why "Glass House PR"? The meaning behind the name

02:34 From computer science dreams to PR: the unconventional path

03:30 Finishing high school at 16 and starting a company at 23

04:25 K Crew and the volunteer moment when PR clicked

05:46 Building Glass House PR with a modem and a laptop

06:39 Two years of pro bono work and the early conviction

09:40 Building a Pan-African footprint

10:00 Facebook in year three: the validation moment

12:10 Before Facebook, there was Google — and a near miss

13:54 Introducing the 2026 State of PR in Africa Report

14:29 The Turkey summit that triggered the whole initiative

16:41 The methodology: 54 agencies, 16 countries, 80 students

17:09 Why 16 countries? Mary wanted 54.

18:15 How the AI and digital-first theme emerged from last year's findings

20:34 Producing Pan-African findings across radically different markets

21:34 The most surprising finding: 81% using AI — but at a basic level

24:47 From SEO to GEO: optimising for AI citations, not search clicks

27:11 Why the future belongs to content creators, not advertisers

27:58 PR budgets rising from 2027 — because of thought leadership content

28:18 74.1% say AI enhances vs 42.5% of Gen Z say it reduces authenticity

31:31 "How do you become the human agent?" 32:00 The 10,000 hours argument: AI amplifies mastery

33:52 Gen Z: microwave generation or untapped opportunity?

34:42 "They just need direction" — Mary on developing Gen Z talent

35:48 Legacy practitioners and the fear that Gen Z is "cheating"

36:13 Finding 7: the generational platform split

36:39 Algorithm volatility, TikTok's Africa problem, and rented land

38:40 Traditional PR agencies and the digital-first reckoning

39:38 The client who still wants to see a newspaper photo

40:55 Trust metrics vs vanity metrics and the Kenyan media landscape

44:42 AI governance: self-governance before external policy

46:35 AI sameness and the value of original human creativity

48:10 "The authenticity that comes with originality can never be replaced"

49:04 Training LLMs on African data: owning the narrative at algorithm level

51:12 Global South amplifying humans vs Global North replacing them

52:40 It's not about AI leadership — it's about use case studies

53:24 Advice for young Kenyans and Africans entering PR in the AI era

54:49 AI proficiency: the new "do you have computer packages?"

56:27 The question nobody asks — and why tech and PR have always been one

Kenya's gig economy drives over KES 100 billion in annual economic impact and supports 150,000+ jobs. Top Bolt drivers earn up to KES 400,000 monthly, with 53% citing ride-hailing as their primary income source and 98% reporting improved livelihoods.

This 49-minute panel features Kenya's platform economy leaders—platform operators, policy experts, and ecosystem builders—breaking down the operational realities behind the numbers, Bolt's comprehensive safety investments, smart regulatory frameworks, inclusion challenges, and the projected growth to 300,000 gig workers by 2028.

Panelists

Moderator: Moses Kemibaro – Founder & CEO, Dotsavvy | Host, Pure Digital Passion

Dimmy Kanyankole – Senior General Manager, East Africa, Bolt

Kenneth Anye – Director of Public Policy, Africa & International Markets, Bolt

Mbugua Njihia – Venture Builder & Solution Architect

Key Discussion Highlights

Earnings Reality:

1/ Average: KES 63,000/month across driver cohorts

2/ Top 20%: KES 180,000–300,000/month

3/ Highest single earner: KES 400,000/month (3x average salary, 6x minimum wage)

Safety Investments:

1/ Emergency button with medical/security dispatch

2/ AI-powered trip anomaly detection

3/ Live trip sharing

4/ Driver vetting (ID + good conduct certificates + PSV insurance)

5/ 12% of Bolt workforce dedicated to safety

Policy Framework:

1/ 53% primary income source + 98% improved livelihoods

2/ Need for holistic regulation addressing fuel costs, financing, commissions

3/ Mobile money's light-touch regulation as blueprint

Growth & Inclusion:

1/ Gender participation gap: 3% female

2/ Rural penetration: 22%

3/ 2028 projection: 300,000 gig workers

Time Stamps

0:00 – KES 100B impact + 150K jobs

2:30 – Earnings: KES 63K avg → KES 400K top

9:00 – 53% primary income + 98% better lives

15:00 – Volatility (62%) vs retention trends

22:00 – Safety deep-dive

30:00 – Policy: holistic vs single-issue

37:00 – Gender/rural inclusion gaps

43:00 – 2028: 300K workers ahead

47:00 – Key takeaways