Study in Kenya. Updated November 2026. 5 min read.
In March 2007, Safaricom launched M-Pesa, and a country where most people had never held a bank account began sending money by text message. Within a few years, paying school fees, a taxi or a farmer by phone was ordinary in Kenya, and a technology scene grew up around it that Kenyans call the Silicon Savannah. For a business school, it is one of the best live case studies anywhere: innovation built for real customers with real constraints, and founders who will tell your students exactly what went wrong.
A Silicon Savannah study tour is a 7-day program in Nairobi for MBA, undergraduate business, engineering or public policy students: a mobile-money day, founder sessions, the hubs of Westlands and Kilimani, an agritech field visit, Konza Technopolis, and a consulting mini-project. Our two-to-three day Silicon Savannah tour is built for investor delegations and corporate teams; this page is the academic version, built around learning outcomes, readings and assignments.
Why Nairobi is the case study
M-Pesa is the origin story, but the lesson is the ecosystem. iHub, which opened in 2010, gave the early scene a home, and coworking spaces such as Nairobi Garage followed. Today, Nairobi startups work in fintech, agritech, pay-as-you-go solar, health tech, logistics and climate technology, and several global technology companies run regional offices or engineering teams in the city. Kenya generates most of its electricity from renewable sources, led by geothermal power at Olkaria in the Rift Valley. And the informal economy, the jua kali workshops and market traders who employ most Kenyans, is where many of these products meet their customers.
What students come to answer
- How did regulation make mobile money possible, and what would a U.S. regulator have done differently?
- What does it take to build for customers who earn daily, in cash, with patchy connectivity?
- Why did Kenya leapfrog card payments, and where has leapfrogging failed?
- How do startups in Nairobi raise money, from local angels, global venture funds and the diaspora?
- What is the informal economy, and is it a market, a workforce or both?
- Who gets left out of digital finance, and what are the risks of mobile credit?
A sample 7-day tour
| Day | Theme | What students do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arrival | Arrive at JKIA, welcome dinner, briefing on Kenya's economy and the week's questions |
| 2 | Mobile money | A session with Safaricom on M-Pesa, requested for each group; visit M-Pesa agents in a neighborhood market with a local guide; case discussion |
| 3 | Hubs and founders | iHub and a coworking space in Westlands; two founder sessions, such as fintech and health tech; an investor panel |
| 4 | Agritech in the field | A smallholder farm or cooperative within two hours of Nairobi, to see how farmers are paid, insured and advised by phone |
| 5 | Infrastructure | Konza Technopolis, about 60 km southeast of Nairobi in Machakos County; a university innovation lab in the afternoon |
| 6 | Social enterprise | A morning in Kibera hosted by a resident and a community organization, meeting founders who build for their own neighborhood; a jua kali workshop with a guide; consulting presentations |
| 7 | Wrap-up | Dawn drive in Nairobi National Park, final reflection, evening flight; or continue to the Mara |
A hosted visit in Kibera
Kibera is one of the largest informal settlements in Africa, and it is full of people solving problems with very little capital: small businesses, youth groups, community savings schemes and media projects built for neighbors rather than for investors. For a business-school group, that is the other half of the Silicon Savannah story. The question is how to visit. A busload of strangers walking through someone's neighborhood to look at poverty teaches nothing and takes a lot from the people who live there.
So our visit is hosted, not toured. A Kibera resident who works with a local community organization leads a small group, sets the route and the pace, and introduces students to founders and organizers who have agreed to meet them. The host decides where photos are welcome and where they are not, and the host, the organization and every founder who gives their time are paid properly. Groups split into teams of about ten, keep phones and cameras away unless invited, and follow the host's lead, as anyone would on a first visit to a busy neighborhood. If your university prefers, the same founders can present at a venue in Westlands instead, and students hear the same stories with the people who own them in charge.
Assignments that work
- Pre-reading: published business-school cases on M-Pesa and Kenyan startups, set by your faculty
- A daily debrief, ten minutes at the end of each day, on one question from the list above
- A consulting mini-project: small teams take a real question from a host startup on day 3 and present answers on day 6
- A final reflection paper or pitch after the trip, graded by your faculty
What it costs and who it suits
We quote per student once we know dates, group size and lodging, and show every line: hotel, meals, transport in our own vehicles, site and speaker fees, staff and insurance. International flights are separate; from New York, round trips usually cost about $900 to $1,600. Students can pay in full or monthly with no deposit. Groups of 10 to 40 work best, split into tracks if interests differ. February to March and October suit most calendars; we avoid the late December holidays, when many founders and executives are away.
Company visits, meetings and study tours generally travel on the eTA, applied for online. Before you book, check the current U.S. State Department advisory for Kenya and confirm your group's travel insurance covers your route; our school trip safety page sets out how we supervise and support groups. In Nairobi, we use our own vehicles, hotels in Westlands or Upper Hill, and build in buffers for traffic, which is the one thing that reliably goes wrong.
Combine it with
Two nights in the Maasai Mara give a group time to digest the week, and the conservancy model, where landowners lease land to tourism partners, is itself a business case. A night at Lake Naivasha pairs a visit to the Olkaria geothermal area with a boat safari. Our money guide explains how M-Pesa works for visitors, so students can try it for themselves from the first day.
