Writing

Essays on Africa's public institutions — what's broken, what works, and what the evidence says.

2026
Jul 25
Every Candidate, Same Terms: Campaign Infrastructure for 2027
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
Jul 25
Legible, Navigable, Writable: What Measuring a City Actually Costs
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
10 min
Jul 13
Who's Missing From the Map: Building-Footprint Coverage Gaps in Nairobi's Informal Settlements
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
6 min
Jul 13
From the CBD to All of Nairobi: A Tile-Streamed Building Pipeline for a City-Scale Twin
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
8 min
Jul 13
Estimating What We Don't Know: A Confidence-Tiered Height Heuristic for Data-Sparse Cities
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
Jul 13
Building Nairobi a Second Time: Notes From a Week of Shipping the Twin
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
6 min
Jul 8
The Twin Nairobi Doesn't Have Yet
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
22 min
Jun 28
The Personal Operating Layer: The Case for an AI That Lives in Your Messages
AI Automation
14 min
Jun 25
The Operating Workforce: An African-First Theory of AI Employees
AI Automation
18 min
Jun 21
Snakes And Ladders: Extra Life
Culture
1 min
Jun 13
The Institutional Gap Is the Feature
AI Automation
8 min
Jun 10
Your NGO Is Illegal and That Is Not Your Fault
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
10 min
Jun 10
Personalized Is the New Glow
AI Automation
5 min
Jun 9
Accountability Is Not a Reason to Keep Humans in the Process
AI Automation
8 min
Jun 5
Your AI Strategy Is Digital Transformation With Better Branding
AI Automation
7 min
Jun 1
The Expense Report Was Never About Expenses
AI Automation
7 min
May 28
Did It Do It For You?
AI Automation
10 min
May 24
Africa's Regulatory Failure Is Not a Law Problem
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
May 20
Your Donor Is Now Your Regulator
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
May 16
What a Language Model Finds When It Reads Your Constitution
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
May 12
Kenya's PBO Act Is Finally in Force After a Decade. Most Organisations Still Cannot Comply.
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
9 min
May 2
Your Knowledge Gaps Are the Most Intimate Data You Have
AI Automation
11 min
May 2
The Corporate Card Was Never the Solution
AI Automation
11 min
May 2
The Agentic Buyer and the End of Dark Patterns
AI Automation
11 min
May 2
The Web Was Built for Navigation, Not Comprehension
AI Automation
12 min
Apr 25
Procuring the Unspecifiable: Why Institutional Software Procurement Is Broken in Kenya
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
19 min
Apr 11
The Last Mile of Care: What Kenya's Community Health Workers Are Missing
Community Health
9 min
Mar 28
The Offline-First Problem: Why Most Institutional Software Fails in the Field
Water & Sanitation
8 min
Mar 14
Democracy Is Infrastructure
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
Feb 26
Why Africa Needs Stablecoin Rails Before It Needs a Digital Currency
Open Finance & Inclusion
7 min
Feb 12
What Happens When Institutions Can Finally See Themselves
Civic & Democratic Infrastructure
7 min
Jan 28
Africa's Institutions Don't Have a Funding Problem
Water & Sanitation
11 min
Jan 10
The Missing Layer: Why Africa's Institutions Operate Blind
11 min