Podcasts · Pure Digital Passion with Moses Kemibaro

Episode 182 - Akili AI’s Simon Bransfield-Garth & Shikoli Makatiani Unpack Practical AI For Businesses In Kenya

6 Jul 2026 · 56 min · Episode 182

In this follow-up episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast, I sit down again with Simon Bransfield-Garth, Founder & CEO of Akili AI, this time joined by Shikoli Makatiani, CTO and technical lead at Akili AI.

Our first conversation with Simon explored his remarkable journey from working on artificial neural networks at Cambridge in the mid-1980s, to Symbian, mobile security, off-grid solar in Africa, and eventually the founding of Akili AI.

This second conversation moves from vision to deployment.

We discuss what it really takes to put AI to work inside Kenyan financial services organizations, including banks, cooperatives, microfinance institutions, customer service teams, and regulated business workflows.

This is a deeply practical conversation about shadow AI, agentic systems, AI governance, AI readiness, AI risk registers, pain owners, MVP-first deployment, staff training, and why Kenyan and African organizations need to focus less on AI hype and more on measurable business outcomes.

Key themes covered:

• Why many organizations are already using AI even when leadership thinks they are not • What “shadow AI” means and why it creates governance and risk exposure • Why AI is not just another digital transformation tool but a decision-layer technology • How Akili AI identifies practical business pain points before deploying AI • Why “pain owners” are critical to successful AI projects • How agentic AI differs from chatbots in financial services workflows • Why AI governance, guardrails, human oversight, and staff training matter • How Akili Snapshot, Akili Assured, and Akili Passport help organizations manage AI readiness and responsibility • Why “good enough is good enough” when selecting AI models for practical African use cases • What CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, founders, and risk leaders should do next

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction and episode context • 01:29 Shadow AI and why unmanaged AI is already inside organizations • 03:04 Why the value is not in the AI model but in what you build around it • 04:43 Shikoli on practical AI deployment in Kenyan organizations • 06:48 Why AI operates at the decision layer of the business • 08:35 Moving from AI strategy to solving real business problems • 10:57 Why AI projects are different from ERP-style implementations • 12:32 Business cases, experimentation, and managing the risk of failure • 14:05 Why Akili AI prefers MVP-first deployment over big-bang transformation • 16:55 Reinventing business processes from the bottom up • 17:58 Building credibility through incremental AI wins • 19:07 Why Shikoli starts by asking: “Show me the pain owner” • 20:46 Customer service pain points, 72-hour response times, and 8,000 calls • 23:59 Moving from first AI projects to third and fourth deployments • 25:42 Managing scope creep in AI projects • 28:50 What agentic AI really means • 31:32 How AI agents can operate in microfinance and cooperative workflows • 34:33 Guardrails, human oversight, and safety in regulated financial services • 36:16 Reducing cognitive load for employees and customer service teams • 37:22 Akili Snapshot and what it reveals about AI readiness • 40:40 Akili Assured, AI governance, and Akili Passport training • 42:56 Real-world shadow AI risks inside banking environments • 45:52 Frontier models, sovereign AI, and why not every use case needs the biggest model • 48:08 Token maxing, cost control, and African AI pragmatism • 52:02 Advice for CEOs: start now, assess readiness, solve practical problems • 53:08 Advice for CTOs, CIOs, and founders on practical AI use cases • 55:19 Closing thoughts on responsible and practical AI deployment

The episode on the publisher’s site ↗ (opens in a new tab)