01Fika
Swahili — "to arrive"Ride-hailing, rebuilt for Africa. Driver-first economics, M-Pesa-native payments, and safety at the core — a mobility brand with real African soul, not a foreign copy.
M
African SMEs underserved
$B
African AI market by 2030
%
Annual market growth
Nations, one digital market
dhamiraThe Mission
Not another tool. The foundation underneath them all.
Global AI was built for Western enterprise budgets and Western context. It is priced out of reach for 99% of African businesses — and it doesn't speak their languages, understand their markets, or respect their data. Akili Mind exists to close that gap from the ground up.
Africa-native by design
Proprietary models trained on local languages, aesthetics and business logic — not a translated Western wrapper.
Built to be affordable
Infrastructure-grade AI delivered to small businesses at a fraction of agency cost — accessible, not exclusive.
Sovereign & data-first
African intelligence processed on African terms — compliant, local, and owned by the continent it serves.
Where everyone else falls short
Global AI agencies$10k+/month · Western-built
InaccessibleGeneric AI toolsNo local context or language
Tone-deafTraditional local agenciesManual · weeks to deliver
Can't scaleAkili MindAffordable + cultural + scalable
The gap
mfumoThe Model
One company. Two engines. A shared brain.
Akili Mind runs a self-reinforcing, dual-engine model. Every app we ship and every video we produce trains the same proprietary African AI core — a data flywheel global competitors can't replicate.
Engine 01
A software ecosystem for African business
Not a single app — a growing family of AI-powered platforms that run the real businesses of the continent: moving people, planning journeys, trading harvests, finding homes. Each one named for a verb of everyday African life.
- Mobility
- Travel
- Agriculture
- Real estate & living
- Freemium → Enterprise
Engine 02
An AI-run content network at continental scale
A faceless, automated media network producing culturally-native video at a scale no human studio can match — across YouTube, TikTok and Facebook — plus virtual creators and content-scaling for enterprise clients. Immediate cash flow and an endless funnel into the apps.
- 100+ channels
- Virtual creators
- B2B content scaling
- Ad & brand revenue
The shared cognitive layer
A proprietary, African-trained AI core — and autonomous agent teams — power every app and every channel.
The more the ecosystem is used, the sharper the intelligence becomes. That compounding data advantage is the moat.
hudumaOur Services
Hire the brain behind the apps.
The same AI workforce that runs our own ventures is open to any company. Akili Mind isn't only a portfolio — it's a platform you can put to work, from a single agent to a whole AI department.
AI Agents-as-a-Service
A team of AI agents that work like staff — marketing, support, research, sales, operations — onboarded to your business and running around the clock, for a fraction of the cost of a human team.
AI Consulting & Build
Strategy, build and deployment. We help you adopt AI and ship custom agent systems on your own data, tools and workflows — from first audit to a live system in production.
The Enterprise Core
License the African-trained models and multi-agent fabric beneath every Akili venture as your own infrastructure — API-first, sovereign, and engineered to run lean.
01
Tell us your need
A quick conversation about what you're trying to achieve — no jargon required.
02
We scope, build & train
We design the agents or system on your data, tools and workflows — and prove it before you scale.
03
You go live — we support
Your AI ships to production. We monitor, tune and grow it alongside you.
Every service is proven on our own ventures before it is ever sold — we run on it first.
miradiThe Ventures
The apps building Africa's digital backbone.
These aren't scattered side-projects. Each is a live instance of Engine 01 — proving the platform in a real market, on the same shared AI core. Every name is a Swahili verb of daily life. Akili means mind.
01
02Twende
Swahili — "let's go"An AI travel agency. From East-African safari to multi-generational journeys, every trip is designed end-to-end by a team of AI agents — concierge, designer, booker and guardian working together.
03Vuna
Swahili — "to harvest"Agritech marketplace linking smallholder farmers directly to commercial buyers. Fair pricing, M-Pesa settlement, and the Mtaalam AI brain guiding every harvest to market.
04Twishi
Swahili — "let's live"A real-estate & lifestyle marketplace across five pillars — Buy, Rent, Stay, Move and Rides — with an AI guide built in to walk you from first search to front door.
05S
Live & producing
Akili Studios
Engine 02 — the content networkOur AI-run media network — thousands of culturally-native videos a year across YouTube, TikTok and Facebook. Flagship brands are already publishing and growing real audiences.
06A
Powering all
The Akili Core
The shared cognitive layerThe proprietary African-trained models and autonomous agent fabric beneath every venture. Run lean and local — engineered to keep compute costs low and margins high from day one.
Mirabelle Artists Creative arm
Our sister brand on the creative side — an international magic & performance collective led by Muoka the Illusionist. Where Akili Mind builds the infrastructure, Mirabelle builds the culture: premium live illusion, mentalism and stage artistry.
nuruThe Connective Light
Nuru — one light across the whole ecosystem.
One identity and one reward balance follow every person across every Akili venture — ride with Fika, trade on Vuna, book through Twende, and the same Nuru moves with you. 1 Nuru = KES 1. It is the loyalty and identity fabric that turns separate apps into a single network — and the seed of a continental value layer.
kwa nini sasaWhy Now
A once-in-a-decade window.
The infrastructure, the demand and the policy have converged at the same moment. Early movers will own entire regions.
01
Infrastructure is ready
Subsea cables, local data centres and 5G have finally built the low-latency backbone real-time AI needs.
02
Demand is exploding
44 million SMEs are digitizing to survive, led by the world's youngest, most mobile-native population.
03
Policy favours the local
A borderless AfCFTA market plus data-sovereignty mandates reward locally-hosted, culturally-native AI.
sokoThe Market
The numbers behind the opportunity.
Near-universal connectivity, near-absent business software. That gap is the opening — and it's measurable.
44M
SMEs across Sub-Saharan Africa — roughly half of GDP
<7%
of African businesses use sophisticated digital tools
$16.5B
Africa's AI market by 2030 — growing ~27% a year
KES 41.7T
moved by M-Pesa in FY2025 — the rails already exist
$8.3B
TAM — African SME software + consumer commerce
$2.8B
SAM — AI-enabled apps + marketplaces in our launch markets
$280M
SOM — realistic 3–5yr capture in Kenya, Nigeria & Rwanda
The rails already exist — M-Pesa, smartphones, mobile data — but the intelligence layer on top of them does not. That gap between near-universal connectivity and near-absent business software is the opening, and both sides are already moving: a $5.7T MSME finance gap in developing economies, and $3.2B invested into African startups in 2024.
Beyond the desk research, we're running a large-scale primary study across Kenya & Rwanda — around 1,000 SMEs, representatively sampled — to validate demand and pricing with our own data.
Sources: IFC · Mastercard, AI in Africa 2025 · Safaricom FY2025 · Communications Authority of Kenya 2024
timuThe Team
Operators who build and ship.
A lean, technical, Africa-rooted team combining product, AI research and relentless execution.
Muoka
Founder & CEO
The architect behind Akili Mind's shift from app to infrastructure. A rare blend of marketing, product and engineering — and a deep cultural read of the African consumer.
Michael Munavu
Senior Software Engineer
Full-stack builder and architect of scale. Elixir/Phoenix specialist with published open-source work, creator of CallWisely AI, and a repeat hackathon winner who ships production code under pressure.
Hannes Bend
AI Inventor & Science Advisor
Pioneer in bio-adaptive AI and founder of breathing.ai. Sole inventor on granted US and China patents, with first-author research presented at the AAAI 2016 Symposium at Stanford — bringing rigorous, human-centered method to Akili's models.
Muoka
Founder & CEO
The architect behind Akili Mind's shift from apps to infrastructure. Muoka personally designed and shipped all six ventures — writing the code, building the products and driving growth — plus Nuru, the shared identity-and-loyalty rail that connects the entire ecosystem.
A rare operator-creative: equally a professional stage illusionist and mentalist, and founder of Mirabelle Artists, an international performing-arts collective. He brings a deep cultural read of the African consumer and the range to design the system, write the code, and command the room.
What he owns
- Product & engineering architecture across the whole portfolio
- The Nuru rail — one identity, one balance across every venture
- Go-to-market, brand and growth
Proof
- Six live venture builds — Fika, Vuna, Twishi, Twende, Akili Studios, Mirabelle
- Built with zero external capital to date
Michael Munavu
Senior Software Engineer
Full-stack engineer and architect of scale, specialising in Elixir and Phoenix/LiveView. He is the build velocity behind the Akili stack — shipping production code under pressure.
Author of the open-source chpter M-Pesa payments library on Hex.pm, founder of CallWisely AI (a live AI customer-care platform across phone, WhatsApp and chat) and the Virgil Africa software studio, and creator of the Mche agritech platform.
Track record
- Published open-source Elixir work — the chpter Hex.pm package
- Founder, CallWisely AI — live AI customer-care product
- Prior engineering at GS1 Kenya and Podii
- Repeat hackathon winner; 20+ live products shipped
Hannes Bend
AI Inventor & Science Advisor
Artist-technologist and founder & CEO of breathing.ai, a digital-wellness venture whose patented bio-adaptive technology personalises on-screen experiences to reduce stress. Also founder of VitalSign AI (webcam-based remote vital-sign sensing).
He anchors Akili Mind's AI research and model strategy with rigorous, human-centred method.
Track record
- Sole inventor on granted US and China patents for adaptive, bio-responsive interfaces (US 10,423,893 · US 11,561,806 · CN 111315278)
- First-author research presented at the AAAI 2016 Spring Symposium at Stanford
- Research roots at the University of Oregon; artist residency at Thoughtworks Arts
maonoVision 2030
The invisible layer powering a continent.
By 2030, Akili Mind becomes the foundational intelligence millions of African businesses run on — and the bridge that exports African creativity to the world.
01
Autonomous SME ecosystem
From AI assistance to AI agency — autonomous agents running marketing, sales and operations for African businesses end-to-end.
02
Sovereign AI infrastructure
African business logic, culture and economic data processed on African soil — independent of Western legacy systems.
03
Global cultural export
Once the foundation is secured, Akili becomes the channel exporting African design, creativity and models to the world.
wasilianaStart a Project
Tell us what you need. We'll build the intelligence.
A team of AI agents to run your operations, a custom system built on your data, or expert guidance to get there — we've proven it on our own ventures, and we'll do it for you. Start a project below and we'll reply within one business day.
Email uspartner@akilimind.com
Nairobi, KenyaKilimani · serving businesses across Africa
Fast responseWe reply within one business day
Your data, your termsAfrica-hosted, confidential, sovereign
maswaliInvestor & Partner FAQ
The questions serious investors ask.
Straight answers on data, market, team and the numbers — the things that matter in diligence.
How is data protection guaranteed?
Privacy by architecture, not policy. We run open-weight AI models inside our own in-region cloud — customer data is never sent to third-party AI providers and doesn't leave the country to be processed. Phone numbers are stored only as one-way hashes (how our Nuru identity already works), encrypted in transit and at rest. We align with Kenya's Data Protection Act (ODPC) and Rwanda's data-protection regime (NCSA).
Has market research been conducted?
Yes — grounded in current, sourced data: ~44M SMEs across Sub-Saharan Africa, under 7% using digital tools, moving into an AI market growing ~27% a year to $16.5B by 2030 (IFC, Mastercard, Safaricom, Communications Authority of Kenya). Just as important, we've validated the operational pain first-hand by building six ventures ourselves on the same engine.
What is the founding team's experience?
Three operators who build and ship. Muoka architected and shipped all six ventures end-to-end. Michael Munavu is an Elixir/Phoenix engineer with published open-source work and a live AI product (CallWisely AI). Hannes Bend, our AI advisor, founded breathing.ai and holds granted US and China patents, with first-author research presented at the AAAI 2016 Symposium at Stanford. The six ventures are our clearest proof of what this team ships.
What are the projected revenues based on?
A bottom-up model built from four revenue lines — Pro subscriptions ($99–199/mo), marketplace take-rates, content & agency, and enterprise API — with our Nuru loyalty layer lifting retention. Year 1 is a conservative ~$241K, scaling toward $1.2M in Year 2. These are model-based projections (we're pre-revenue); the full model is available on request.
wekezaInvest in Akili Mind
Back the foundation Africa's
Back the foundation Africa's
economy will run on.
We are raising a $170K pre-seed round to scale the platform — and the ventures it powers — across the continent. We are in conversation with investors, operators and institutions who see the shift to sovereign, African-built AI.