A Nairobi research lab

The operating layer Africa's institutions never got.

We build software that runs institutions — agents that do the work, not tools they still have to operate.

institution · enterprise · consumer — one engine, one thesis
What we do

Every institution runs on a stack. Africa's never got the operating layer — so it still runs on paper. We build that layer: agents that do the work, grounded in one ledger.

What we've shipped
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BungeConnect The operating system for Kenya's parliamentary offices CIVIC · LIVE

BungeConnect gives constituency offices the tools to manage casework, engage constituents, track CDF distribution, and run efficient offices — from a single secure platform. Built for the 2027 election cycle.

Open BungeConnect ↗
PBOMaster TurboTax for Kenya's PBO registration. Get compliant, get registered. CIVIC · LIVE

Every year hundreds of Kenyan NGOs fail their first PBORA submission — wrong board composition, missing constitution clauses, incomplete documentation. PBOMaster is the preparation platform that fixes this. Upload your constitution: Claude checks it against all 14 required clauses of the PBO Act 2013 and generates compliant patches. The board validator checks nationality, residency, term limits, and conflict-of-interest rules in real time. One click generates your complete PBORA submission package: Form 1, Form 8, board resolutions, COI declarations. Built in partnership with PBORA — every submission arriving via PBOMaster is pre-screened, reducing rejection rates.

Open PBOMaster ↗
ProcureBee The AI agent that buys things for your company — any website, any currency, under 5 minutes. AI · IN BUILD

Employees send a product link in Slack. A manager taps Approve on their phone. ProcureBee completes the checkout and files the receipt automatically — using Stripe's new agentic payment rails. No shared credit cards. No expense reports. No waiting. Built on Stripe Link's agent wallet infrastructure: each purchase triggers a one-time virtual card scoped to a specific merchant and amount. The card is used once and destroyed. The real card number is never shared.

Zahra The AI skincare consultant built for melanin-rich skin. Radiance, never lightness. AI · IN BUILD

Zahra is a personal skincare and beauty consultant for Black and African women — and for anyone with a deep, melanin-rich skin tone. Most skincare is built and tested on lighter skin, so it misreads deeper tones: especially the dark marks (post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation) a breakout leaves behind, which last far longer on melanin-rich skin and are made worse by harsh, generic fixes. Zahra leads a warm, real consultation — she asks the right questions, takes you seriously, and tells the truth even when it isn't what you hoped to hear. She is a 'boxed' AI by design: she phrases and reassures, but every hard fact — the products, the prices, the routine itself — is supplied by a vetted engine and shown as cards. She never invents a product or a claim. Her north star is radiance, never lightness: she helps skin become clearer, calmer, and more itself, and she actively warns against bleaching and unsafe 'brightening.' That is a moral line, not a style choice.

AnswerTab Right-click anything on any webpage. Get an instant, context-aware AI answer. Never leave your page. AI · IN BUILD

AnswerTab kills the 'open a new tab to look something up' reflex — the same way Dictionary popups killed looking up words in a browser. It is a Manifest V3 Chrome extension that lives as a native layer on top of every webpage. Highlight text, right-click or hit Cmd+Shift+K, and get an answer that is specific to the article you are reading — not a generic definition. Bring your own API key: AI traffic routes directly from your browser to your chosen provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini) and never touches AnswerTab servers. The second product layer is the Knowledge Map: a locally-stored graph of every concept you have ever asked about, organised into clusters and linked across sessions — turning AnswerTab into a long-term intellectual companion.

PesaRails Stablecoin-native open finance rails. Kill the fees. Keep the money. FINANCE · COMING

PesaRails is stablecoin-native open finance infrastructure for Africa. We are building the rails that let African utilities, cooperatives, and service-delivery organisations send, receive, and settle value without paying 7% to legacy intermediaries. Coming soon — ship target 2026.

Coming 2026 — see it on the map →
AccessWASH The enterprise operating system for African water utilities WASH · LIVE

AccessWASH combines field team management, customer billing, real-time analytics, and stakeholder reporting in a single platform built for the operational reality of African water service providers. Deployed across major Nairobi utilities. Built in partnership with IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and Rotary International.

Open AccessWASH ↗
From the lab notebook
all writing →
Jun 2026 · 8 min
Personalized Is the New Glow
Glow was never a product — it's the look of healthy skin, and healthy skin is personal. For deep-skinned people, the market sold products built for someone else and left them to expensive, marking trial and error. The new glow is personalization, and Zahra is how it finally scales.
May 2026 · 10 min
Your Knowledge Gaps Are the Most Intimate Data You Have
Location data records where your body was. Purchase data records what your wallet did. Epistemic data — what you looked up, what confused you, where your understanding ran out — records what your mind was doing. It is more intimate than any other category of behavioral data. And the tools being built to help people read are being built right at its center.
May 2026 · 11 min
The Web Was Built for Navigation, Not Comprehension
The hyperlink is a navigation primitive. It connects documents. What it cannot do is bring the explanation to you — inline, at the point of confusion, without a context switch. The web gave us extraordinary access to knowledge. It never built the layer that helps you understand any of it.
The map of the lab
See how every product and essay connects to one thesis.
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