James Ngugi shares the story of winning #SmartCityNairobi, Twitter’s first African hackathon, and what the journey to San Francisco taught him about African innovation
In October 2016, I stood on stage at AngelHack’s Global Demo Day in San Francisco, representing Africa. A few months earlier, I had been in Nairobi, building a garbage reporting app with my team during a weekend hackathon. The journey between those two moments changed how I think about African innovation.
It started with #SmartCityNairobi, Twitter’s first hackathon in Africa. The challenge was simple: build something that makes Nairobi a smarter city. We chose to tackle garbage – specifically, the disconnect between residents frustrated by uncollected waste and authorities who often didn’t know where the problems were.
ReportTaka was our answer. A crowdsourced application that let anyone report garbage collection issues, complete with location data and photos. Simple in concept, but powerful in execution. We won.
The prize? A trip to San Francisco to pitch at the global finals and visit Twitter headquarters.
The View from the Outside
Walking through Twitter’s offices in San Francisco was surreal. Here was the platform that had become central to Kenya’s digital conversation, and we were there because of an idea born from frustration with uncollected garbage in our neighbourhoods.
But what struck me most wasn’t the fancy offices or the tech celebrities. It was realising that our problems – African problems – were worth solving on a global stage. The investors and entrepreneurs we met weren’t looking at us with curiosity about some exotic market. They were genuinely interested in our solutions.
That was the first lesson: African innovation isn’t a sideshow. It’s part of the main event.
“That was the first lesson: African innovation isn’t a sideshow. It’s part of the main event”
Building for Context
The second lesson was about context. ReportTaka worked because we understood Nairobi. We knew that people would report issues if given an easy way to do it. We knew that geolocation data could help authorities prioritise. We knew the frustration firsthand because we lived it.
This is the advantage African builders have. We don’t need to imagine the problems – we experience them. We don’t need focus groups to understand our users – they’re our neighbours, our families, ourselves.
The best solutions I’ve seen across Africa come from this deep contextual understanding. It’s why M-Pesa revolutionised mobile money here before anywhere else. It’s why African fintech is leading innovation globally. We build for the reality we know.
Coming Home
I could have stayed in San Francisco. The offers came. The opportunities were there. But I kept thinking about the problems waiting to be solved back home. The SMEs struggling with manual processes. The businesses that couldn’t access decent HR software. The entrepreneurs who deserved better tools.
So I came back. Since then, I’ve helped build HimaHR, which now serves over 20,000 employees across 8 African countries. We’ve launched dPOS for small retailers. We’ve processed hundreds of millions in transactions through our payment systems.
None of it would have happened without that hackathon weekend. Not because of the trip or the exposure, but because it confirmed what I suspected: the most meaningful work I could do was building solutions for the people and businesses I understood best.
African innovation belongs on the global stage. But the building happens here, in the communities we serve, solving problems we know intimately. That’s the lesson from Lari to San Francisco and back again.
