Author: Kaluka wanjala

Kenya, India and Italy have announced a strategic trilateral partnership aimed at co-designing and deploying scalable, sovereign AI systems across Africa. This makes it one of the most structured international AI collaborations involving an African government. The agreement was unveiled following the AI Impact Summit 2026. It signals a shift from fragmented pilot projects toward what the partners describe as “AI diffusion pathways”. The collaboration is co-led by the EkStep Foundation (India), the Directorate of Digital Economy and Emerging Technologies at Kenya’s Ministry of ICT and Digital Economy and Italy’s Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy through the G7-endorsed…

The Connected Africa Summit (CAS) 2026 will be held in Nairobi from April 27 to 30 at the Edge Convention Centre. Under the theme “Uniting Africa’s Innovation for a Single Digital Market,” the summit aims to move beyond dialogue and into execution. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. Over 2,000 delegates gathered in Diani in 2025. Discussions ranged from digital inclusion, climate technology, connectivity, future skills, data policy and emerging technologies. The 2025 edition led to the adoption of the Diani Resolutions. This is a joint communiqué committing stakeholders to strengthen…

 Vertiv has introduced the Vertiv Avocent MergePoint Unity 2, a next-generation KVM switch platform for secure, centralised management of IT devices across enterprise data centre environments, distributed edge locations and branch office environments. Designed to help operators simplify day-to-day operations, respond to issues with speed, and maintain system availability, the switch enables remote diagnosis, configuration, and recovery while protecting IT systems from unverified firmware and software.  “As organisations distribute workloads across multiple locations, the complexity of infrastructure management grows accordingly,” said Ramesh Menon, vice president of IT systems solutions at Vertiv. “The Vertiv Avocent MergePoint Unity 2 provides a centralised control point…

I&M Bank has partnered with Visa aimed to help strengthen Kenya’s digital payment infrastructure and expanding the adoption of Visa-powered products in the market. According to the two institutions, the agreement will focus on upgrading payment systems in underserved areas, improving cross-border transaction efficiency, and expanding access to secure digital payment services across Kenya. Kihara Maina, Regional CEO of I&M Bank, described the move as a major step in advancing the bank’s digitization agenda. “We are delighted to strengthen our long-standing partnership with Visa through this strategic agreement, which advances our digitization agenda and ambition to build robust digital payment…

Auni, an artificial intelligence-powered mini app developed by Fastagger and embedded within Safaricom’s M-Pesa Business Super App, has surpassed 3,500 business sign-ups within its first three months of its launch. Auni is built on Microsoft Azure and is optimized for affordable smartphones and low-connectivity environments. It helps to transform M-Pesa PDF statements into structured dashboards using optical character recognition (OCR) and lightweight AI models. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. Instead of manually reviewing statements, business owners can instantly visualize sales patterns, customer frequency, cash flow trends, peak transaction hours and…

NETSCOUT has been recognised as a top workplace by Comparably, an employee review platform that ranks more than 70,000 companies on key categories impacting the employee experience. Comparably’s Best Place to Work Awards is an annual series, announced quarterly, highlighting the best workplaces. The awards are derived from sentiment ratings anonymously provided by employees about their workplaces in multiple categories on Comparably.com during a 12-month period. Winners are then determined based on 20 core culture metrics. NETSCOUT received a top award in three categories this quarter, namely: Comparably analysed more than 15 million anonymous employee ratings on 70,000 companies to determine the latest rankings, with…

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has proposed a $5 million (about Ksh 645 million) equity investment in Arc Ride. According to IFC disclosures, the investment will support Arc Ride’s ongoing Series A financing round aimed at scaling its battery-swapping network across Kenya, expanding into new African markets, and strengthening its technology capabilities through research and development and compliance upgrades. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. The size of the stake IFC intends to acquire has not been disclosed. Arc Ride operates a Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) model for electric two-wheelers. Under the model,…

Sage has officially launched Sage Intacct in Kenya. This introduces AI-powered, cloud-native financial management capabilities to the country’s growing mid-market segment. Sage Intacct is designed for growing and complex organisations that require more than basic accounting tools. The platform embeds AI and automation across core finance functions. Its main capabilities include multi-entity consolidation, multi-currency support, real-time dashboards and reporting, intelligent workflow automation and open API integrations with other business systems. Sage Intacct aims to improve accuracy while reducing risk and fraud exposure by automating processes such as bank reconciliations and outlier detection. According to Jordaan Burger, Managing Director for Sage…

Valentine’s Day this year saw thousands of Nairobians on the move, with new data from ride-hailing platform Bolt revealing Nyayo Stadium as the most frequented destination on the app. According to Bolt’s internal ride data, more than 4,000 trips were completed to and from Nyayo Stadium on February 14, making it the single busiest destination on the platform that day. The surge coincided with the recently concluded HSBC SVNS tournament. “Nyayo Stadium stood out as the single busiest destination on our platform this Valentine’s. This reflects not only the impact of major international tournaments like the HSBC SVNS, but also…

Nithio has extended a USD 7 million senior debt working capital facility to Spiro Mobility through its FAIR (Facility for Adaptation, Inclusion and Resilience) platform. This marks its first direct investment in Africa’s e-mobility sector. If you have a startup you want featured on TechArena, let us know through this contact form here. Unlike venture capital equity rounds, this is structured as senior debt. Debt financing typically follows proven unit economics. It suggests that Spiro’s model is demonstrating predictable cash flows and operational scale. Spiro operates in more than seven African markets and reports 80,000+ electric motorcycles deployed, 2,500+ battery swap stations, 4…