A focused view of products I have built, managed, or specified across fintech, clean energy, civic tech, AI, and entrepreneurship training. Each product is framed by the problem it answers, the solution approach, and the outcome it created or is designed to create.
A Pay-As-You-Go digital financing platform that lets Kenyan smallholder farmers access solar water pumps through M-PESA micro-payments. Jointly developed with Davis & Shirtliff, whose distribution network spans 50+ branches and 700+ stockists across East Africa, and funded by PREO.
Read problem, solution, and outcome+
Problem
A solar water pump costs around KES 120,000, while many smallholder farmers earn roughly KES 800 on a good day and cannot access bank loans without payslips, collateral, or formal credit histories. The financing solution also had to work for farmers and field engineers using feature phones, not smartphone apps or reliable mobile data.
Solution
Designed the platform around the channels farmers and field engineers already used: M-PESA for repayments and USSD for service workflows. Prioritised offline-compatible field operations over app-based convenience, and made the M-PESA C2B reconciliation engine idempotent so delayed, duplicated, or out-of-order callbacks could not create duplicate activations or wrongful locks.
Outcome
DayLipa Finance launched in April 2023 and is operational across Davis & Shirtliff’s distribution network. 500+ solar pump devices are under active remote management, the USSD service application is used by field engineering teams, and the platform is targeting 112,000 PAYGO sales by 2029 with expansion planned into Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia.
A digital ordering and credit platform for small informal shops, known as dukas, that form the backbone of last-mile retail in sub-Saharan Africa. Funded by TRANSFORM, a joint initiative between Unilever, FCDO, and EY, it connects micro-retailers directly to Unilever and Upfield distribution with a flexible credit line and same-day green delivery through Skoot.
Read problem, solution, and outcome+
Problem
Duka owners, many of them women-owned or women-operated, run on cash, travel physically to wholesalers, and have no access to formal credit. That limits inventory, increases stockouts, and keeps them trapped in an inefficient supply chain that has barely changed in decades.
Solution
Managed end-to-end delivery and pilot testing across 51 retailers in Kambu and Nairobi. Prioritised automated tracking and reporting over feature expansion during the pilot, replacing manual processes that consumed hours each week with data systems that fed funder and management reporting.
Outcome
Pilot participants saw a 15% sales uplift, with shop owners ordering more frequently and increasing basket sizes because of credit access and delivery convenience. 51 retailers were onboarded across two regions, and automated reporting enabled the scale-up business case for digitised last-mile FMCG distribution with embedded micro-credit.
A personal finance Progressive Web App for East African users who transact primarily through M-PESA. It parses mobile money statements, auto-categorises transactions using an AI taxonomy built for East African money movement, and surfaces net worth across mobile money, bank accounts, and cash.
Read problem, solution, and outcome+
Problem
Over 70% of financial transactions in East Africa flow through M-PESA, but most personal finance tools are designed for Western banking: card transactions, direct debits, and subscription billing. East African users lack visibility into spending, savings growth, and net worth across the fragmented accounts they actually use.
Solution
Built an M-PESA statement parser with a 14-category AI-powered taxonomy trained on 500+ real transaction descriptions, including agent fees, person-to-person transfers, airtime top-ups, and till payments. Chose Progressive Web App architecture after user interviews showed 60% of target users avoid large app downloads because of data costs and storage limits, and made zero-plaintext encryption a non-negotiable security layer.
Outcome
The parser reached 94% transaction categorisation accuracy across the 14-category taxonomy. Zero-plaintext encryption became the platform security standard, and the migration from Lovable Cloud to Supabase + Vercel happened without service disruption while improving query performance and reducing hosting cost.
A secure digital voting platform for the Sweden Alumni Network Kenya, a community of roughly 200 members. It handles candidate nominations, voter eligibility verification, secret ballot casting, and result tabulation in a single integrated system designed so trust is the architecture, not an afterthought.
Read problem, solution, and outcome+
Problem
SANK needed to elect a new board across a geographically dispersed membership, but previous digital voting attempts failed because members questioned ballot integrity and voter eligibility. Any perception of manipulation would delegitimise the elected board before it started and fracture a community built on shared values.
Solution
Delivered the complete development handoff package: PRD, user flows, security specifications, technical architecture, and Material Design 3 design system. Replaced self-registration with admin-controlled CSV voter import after independent security analysis showed the convenient model could not reliably verify that registrants were SANK members in good standing.
Outcome
The security model passed full election committee review, with CSV voter import specifically cited as the design element that gave the committee confidence. The specification suite is complete for development handoff, sized for roughly 200 members, and extensible to other professional alumni networks.
05
EdTech · B2B · HCD
In development
BDS Mentorship Platform
Platform in development, not yet public
A Business Development Services mentorship platform for the Institute of Certified SIYB Trainers Kenya. It connects certified trainers with aspiring entrepreneurs through structured mentorship programmes, group facilitation sessions, and trainee progress tracking, digitising a process that had been informal and undocumented.
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Problem
SIYB-certified trainers in Kenya had no digital infrastructure for mentorship: relationships lived in WhatsApp, trainee progress was untracked, and group sessions had no standard format. ICST had no data on whether mentorship was working, who was excelling, or how to scale what worked.
Solution
Led an 18+ session collaborative design and specification process with ICST stakeholders. Prioritised Group Sessions as a first-class product entity rather than treating them as calendar add-ons, then produced UX documentation aligned to 14 global HCD standards plus a 107-test-case UAT runbook with Playwright automation guidance.
Outcome
The complete specification suite is ready for development, including 107 test cases from trainer onboarding through group facilitation to trainee progress reporting. The HCD-compliant design system references 14 named global standards, including ISO 9241-210, WCAG 2.1 AA, Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics, and Gestalt principles.
An AI-guided business plan builder that transforms the ILO Start and Improve Your Business methodology into a structured digital experience. The methodology is active in 100+ countries through thousands of certified trainers, and BizFramer is built under Civanta.io.
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Problem
The SIYB programme has trained millions of entrepreneurs, but it still runs through paper workbooks and in-person facilitation. Trainers cannot scale beyond the room they are in, trainees lose momentum between sessions, and the ecosystem measures participation rather than business plan quality or viability.
Solution
Designed the product strategy and partnership framework with the Institute of Certified SIYB Trainers Kenya, supported by discovery interviews with 8 trainers across urban and rural contexts. Scoped the MVP to Generate Your Business Idea instead of the full SIYB cycle because trainer interviews showed idea validation was the highest-attrition point.
Outcome
The partnership framework with ICST Kenya is complete, including an executed mutual NDA that established the legal and trust foundation for the first trainer-institute-endorsed digital SIYB tool. BizFramer was selected as the lead product narrative for CMU-Africa Business Incubation Programme evaluation, and research with 8 trainers saved months of lower-impact engineering work by reshaping the MVP scope.
An AI-powered co-facilitator for agile retrospectives. It guides teams through structured 4Ls retrospectives, Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For, with intelligent prompts, cross-sprint pattern recognition, and automated follow-up grounded in PMI Disciplined Agile best practices.
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Problem
Retrospectives are the most valuable agile ceremony and the most frequently skipped. Teams struggle with dominant voices, shallow insights, untracked action items, and little visibility into whether they are improving sprint over sprint.
Solution
Co-developed with Richard Magu and designed the AI as a co-facilitator rather than an autonomous agent: it suggests prompts, synthesises themes in real time, identifies recurring patterns, and automates post-retro summaries and weekly action item tracking. Anchored the product on PMI Disciplined Agile Ways of Working instead of generic Scrum so the AI had a specific knowledge base for pattern recognition.
Outcome
The live platform implements the full retrospective lifecycle: pre-retro prep automation, AI-guided 4Ls discussion, and post-retro summaries delivered within 1 hour. It was presented at PMI Kenya Chapter, where live Mentimeter polling confirmed pattern blindness and action item follow-through as the top two pain points among practising PMs, and beta feedback now informs the iteration backlog.