Flux Working Papers
A citable, timestamped registry of the series. Each paper has a stable number, a content fingerprint, and — once deposited — a DOI. Download all (BibTeX) · Browse by figure →
| No. | Title | Sector | Published | Identifier | Fingerprint |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WP35 | The Second Question: What Changes When an Explainer Can Be Asked Again
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
an explainer that answers once is a dictionary. What makes it worth having is being able to ask the obvious follow-up in the same place, without star… |
AI Automation | Aug 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 77ce8a9ed0b8 |
| WP34 | The Panel Is Also a Tab
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
every tool that promises to explain a word without sending you away still moves you — into a panel, an overlay, a results page. The expensive part of… |
AI Automation | Aug 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} c9691f0268ea |
| WP33 | What Dies on Election Night
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
a Kenyan campaign is the most operationally capable organisation most constituencies will ever have. It is assembled from nothing in about six months… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} fea2b27625a5 |
| WP32 | Legible, Navigable, Writable: What Measuring a City Actually Costs
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
we replaced guessed building heights with heights measured from satellite imagery across Nairobi. It worked. But it also revealed that two datasets w… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} e3425d351ddd |
| WP31 | Building Nairobi a Second Time: Notes From a Week of Shipping the Twin
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
a week-by-week account of how the Nairobi model went from about a thousand city-centre buildings to 1.27 million real ones across the whole metro — w… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 9aab888cf768 |
| WP30 | Estimating What We Don't Know: A Confidence-Tiered Height Heuristic for Data-Sparse Cities
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
we know where 1.27 million buildings *are*, but for 99.7% of them nobody has ever recorded how *tall* they are. Rather than guess silently or ship a … |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} e2c724a49b59 |
| WP29 | Who's Missing From the Map: Building-Footprint Coverage Gaps in Nairobi's Informal Settlements
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
every building on a modern open map got there one of two ways — a person traced it, or a computer spotted it in satellite imagery. This paper counts … |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} c2dacb1b8e78 |
| WP28 | From the CBD to All of Nairobi: A Tile-Streamed Building Pipeline for a City-Scale Twin
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
the old map showed about a thousand buildings in the city center. The new one shows every building in greater Nairobi — 1.27 million of them — and st… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} f0a7c613f818 |
| WP27 | The Twin Nairobi Doesn't Have Yet
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
we built a 3D model of central Nairobi you can explore, and sold $1.99 billboards inside it as a joke. The joke turns out to be a working prototype o… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jul 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 2ba58d6ca215 |
| WP26 | The Personal Operating Layer: The Case for an AI That Lives in Your Messages
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
people already run their lives inside chat — texting themselves, keeping a group chat with exactly one member. The useful personal AI will not be ano… |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 8a10b50be15f |
| WP25 | The Operating Workforce: An African-First Theory of AI Employees
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
"AI employee" normally means replacing somebody who has a job. In African institutions the roles are mostly unfilled to begin with — one procurement … |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} c548f3d54fed |
| WP24 | Snakes And Ladders: Extra Life
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
a placeholder note rather than the paper. It sets out what Snakes and Ladders actually is — a game of pure chance descended from an Indian morality g… |
Culture | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} c1798ba4463b |
| WP23 | The Institutional Gap Is the Feature
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
the standard view is that African institutions will get to AI late, because they have less of everything. This paper argues the opposite. Where you c… |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 2665b5384a24 |
| WP22 | Your NGO Is Illegal and That Is Not Your Fault
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
a great many Kenyan organisations doing real work are not registered under the law that now governs them, which means they cannot legally take the fu… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 4f69df07490d |
| WP21 | Personalized Is the New Glow
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
"glow" was never a product you could buy. It is what healthy skin looks like, and healthy skin is specific to the person. Deep, melanin-rich skin has… |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} d803dc92dad1 |
| WP20 | Accountability Is Not a Reason to Keep Humans in the Process
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
organisations keep a person in the loop on routine, rule-bound work and call that accountability. For that specific kind of work, this paper argues, … |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} c804de94ba52 |
| WP19 | Your AI Strategy Is Digital Transformation With Better Branding
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
most corporate AI strategies make an existing process faster. That is what digital transformation did in the 1990s, under a different name. Real tran… |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 31f503b09ba2 |
| WP18 | The Expense Report Was Never About Expenses
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
the expense report is not an accounting instrument. It exists because organisations cannot trust staff to spend money correctly, so they check afterw… |
AI Automation | Jun 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} b41df615bf71 |
| WP17 | Did It Do It For You?
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
there is one test for any AI deployment. When the work was finished, did the AI do it, or did it help a person do it faster? Most of what is being ca… |
AI Automation | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 4b936e81bee1 |
| WP16 | Africa's Regulatory Failure Is Not a Law Problem
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
Kenya replaced a bad law for non-profits with a good one, and registration barely moved. The lesson is that drafting a good law is only half the job.… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} a5356f7040ab |
| WP15 | Your Donor Is Now Your Regulator
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
the pressure on Kenyan civil society to prove it is compliant used to come from the state. It now comes mostly from the donors who fund the work, thr… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} a7f47d0975c7 |
| WP14 | What a Language Model Finds When It Reads Your Constitution
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
asking AI to interpret the law is hard and contested. Asking it to check a document against a fixed list — does this constitution contain the clauses… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} f3ffb191a3a3 |
| WP13 | Kenya's PBO Act Is Finally in Force After a Decade. Most Organisations Still Cannot Comply.
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
the law governing Kenyan non-profits was passed in 2013 and only came into force more than a decade later. Its requirements are not unreasonable on t… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 405586e3a16a |
| WP12 | The Agentic Buyer and the End of Dark Patterns
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
software pricing pages are built to work on human psychology — a high number placed first, a "most popular" badge, a countdown. An agent doing the bu… |
AI Automation | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 51a9bc8caf43 |
| WP11 | The Corporate Card Was Never the Solution
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
companies still pass one card number around the office, because there has never been a good way to let somebody buy one specific thing. Every instrum… |
AI Automation | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 5874b8b5ec36 |
| WP10 | Your Knowledge Gaps Are the Most Intimate Data You Have
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
where you went and what you bought are already treated as sensitive data. What you did not understand — the words you looked up, the sentence where y… |
AI Automation | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 4578a1f4b473 |
| WP09 | The Web Was Built for Navigation, Not Comprehension
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
every primitive the web gave us — the link, the page, the tab — is a way of going somewhere else. Understanding the thing in front of you is the one … |
AI Automation | May 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 32907ed1c9df |
| WP08 | Procuring the Unspecifiable: Why Institutional Software Procurement Is Broken in Kenya
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
Kenyan public bodies buy software the way they buy office furniture — write a specification, take the lowest compliant bid, set a delivery date. Soft… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Apr 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 6c579a6f5761 |
| WP07 | The Last Mile of Care: What Kenya's Community Health Workers Are Missing
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
Kenya has committed to a community health promoter for roughly every hundred households, each visiting homes every month and writing what they find i… |
Community Health | Apr 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} ff283eeb5de2 |
| WP06 | The Offline-First Problem: Why Most Institutional Software Fails in the Field
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
most institutional software assumes a working internet connection. In the field there often is not one, so the app stops, the team falls back to pape… |
Water & Sanitation | Mar 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} c7158724783d |
| WP05 | Democracy Is Infrastructure
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
a Kenyan MP's constituency office runs on WhatsApp groups, a shared spreadsheet, and the personal phones of whoever has been there longest. Whatever … |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Mar 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 176ee2dd991b |
| WP04 | Why Africa Needs Stablecoin Rails Before It Needs a Digital Currency
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
moving money in and out of Africa is expensive, and the official answer — a digital currency issued by a central bank — is years of regulation away. … |
Open Finance & Inclusion | Feb 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 59b722f503f7 |
| WP03 | What Happens When Institutions Can Finally See Themselves
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
this is the other side of the missing-layer argument — what actually changes on the ground once an institution can watch its own operations day by da… |
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure | Feb 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} 6318f3132feb |
| WP02 | Africa's Institutions Don't Have a Funding Problem
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
the usual explanation for a failing public institution is that it is underfunded. This paper argues the binding constraint is different: the software… |
Water & Sanitation | Jan 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} bef2bd9d6516 |
| WP01 | The Missing Layer: Why Africa's Institutions Operate Blind
↗ paper
{# The author's own plain-English line. Thirty-four formal titles in one
column read as a wall; this is what tells them apart at a glance. #}
most African institutions cannot answer basic questions about their own operations — how much water left the plant yesterday, how many bills were pai… |
Jan 2026 | ⌁ verified | {# SHA-256 of the paper's own body. Truncated for the table; the full hash is in the title tooltip and on the paper's own page footer, so this isn't a number invented for this table alone. #} bdccaf1b9dab |