Most Kenyan businesses have met AI as a chatbot in a browser. Somebody in marketing uses it to draft copy, somebody in finance pastes figures into it, and the board has a vague sense that “we are doing AI”. That is not deploying AI. It is renting a very clever intern with no job description.

Next Tuesday I am moderating a free webinar with Simon Bransfield-Garth and Shikoli Makatiani of Akili AI on what comes after the chatbot: how to go beyond ChatGPT for practical AI, which means picking a real business problem, building a governed workflow around it, and getting a return inside the same financial year. Simon has been working in AI since the 1980s. Shikoli builds the systems. Between them they have taken Kenyan financial institutions from two-week loan decisions to five-minute ones, and they will walk through how that actually gets done, including the governance that lets the chief risk officer say yes.

One thing has changed since this session was planned. On the 15th of October 2026 the Senate ICT Committee rejected the Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026, judging its penalties too harsh for a sector still finding its feet. So there is no AI law coming to tell you what to do. That makes governance a leadership choice, not a compliance deadline, and in my experience the businesses that make that choice early are the ones that move fastest. We will talk about what good looks like without a statute to hide behind.

Tuesday 27th October 2026, 10:00 to 11:30 EAT, online, free.

Register here: https://luma.com/j89mwf6s

If you have questions you would like put to Simon and Shikoli, drop them in the comments and I will bring them into the session.