Before the anti-Finance Bill protests erupted in June 2024, young Kenyans did not wait for newspapers or government briefings to tell them what the legislation meant for their lives.
Developers built custom GPT tools trained on the Bill itself, answering clause-by-clause questions from citizens in plain language. On TikTok and X, young Kenyans created cartoons, skits, explainer videos and translated the Bill into local languages to reach older and rural populations. A generation had, in real time, taught itself to decode the State.
Mwende Mugambi watched all of this and recognised something beyond a protest movement. She saw a structural problem that predated the uprising and would outlast it: most Kenyans, young ones included, remain locked out of the policies that govern their daily lives. Not because the information does not exist, but because no one has made it accessible.
Founder of Mizizi Africa Mwende Mugambi speaks during the launch of the IGAD Regional Youth Coalition on Climate and Climate Resilient Agri Food Systems in Nairobi on May 5,2026.
Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation Media Group
Now 26, Mwende is the founder of Mizizi Africa, an organisation that builds artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbots to turn dense policy documents into interactive, conversational tools that anyone can use.
Her work sits at the intersection of technology, civic education and community engagement, and it is gaining attention in spaces where those three things rarely meet.
Her path into that work was not straight. She did not begin in software or AI. She began in community spaces, running science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, and youth empowerment programmes during school holidays, introducing high school students to basic computer literacy in institutions such as the Kenya National Library Services (KNLS).
It was a phase defined more by access and exposure than advanced tools. But even in those early sessions, a pattern kept emerging. After every training, participants would turn to her with a question she could not easily answer : “So what happens after you have trained us?”
“What is the value of skills if they are not able to influence any change in the country?” she asked.
The answer she arrived at was Mizizi Policy Café, a project she describes as a space that turns policy discussions into accessible conversations for young people.
“Just like the name, it’s a space where we have conversations around policy,” she said. “There are so many policies in Kenya, so we choose one and work on it.”
Once a policy is selected, the project brings together 20 young people drawn from deliberately diverse backgrounds, from KNLS, universities, partner organisations and informal settlements.
“At least three are from a slum area, two are from institutions,” she said.
From those discussions, the group moves into a technical phase: building an AI chatbot trained on the selected policy. Once deployed on platforms like WhatsApp, the tool allows anyone to ask questions in plain language and receive instant, accessible responses.
“We build a chatbot that will translate that specific policy and then we deploy it into the community,” she said.
The speed at which this can now happen is part of the argument. Mwende says a functional chatbot can be built and deployed in four to five hours using accessible low-code tools and AI-assisted platforms.
Founder of Mizizi Africa Mwende Mugambi speaks during the launch of the IGAD Regional Youth Coalition on Climate and Climate Resilient Agri Food Systems in Nairobi on May 5,2026.
Photo credit: Evans Habil | Nation Media Group
“The previous night, it took me approximately four to five hours to create a chatbot where one can ask any question in regards to the IGAD regional climate strategy and action plan,” she said.
For her, that speed reflects something important: this is no longer the exclusive territory of experienced developers.
During the 2024 protests, the Finance Bill GPT was the first Kenyan-made custom GPT tool of its kind. What Mwende is doing is taking that same instinct and building it into a repeatable, community-led process.
She made that connection herself when speaking at the IGAD Regional Youth Coalition launch in Nairobi, pointing directly to the protest moment as evidence of a problem her work is designed to solve.
“Do you remember when we had the protests against the Finance Bill in 2024?” she asked the room. “Young people had to create videos to explain what that Bill says. That shows that there is a gap between the policies we have and the engagement of the people with those policies.”
“The gap is not the absence of solutions,” she said. “Policy already exists and people should not be excluded or locked out.”
The climate dimension of her current work is deliberate. She is expanding the Mizizi model across Meru, Isiolo, Nakuru, Nanyuki and Nairobi, working with institutions, universities and creative organisations to anchor the chatbot-building process in communities where climate policy is most consequential and least understood.
With a significant majority of Kenya’s population under the age of 35, Jacobs Fikirini, the Principal Secretary for the State Department for Youth Affairs and Creative Economy, argued that young people are not a side constituency in the climate conversation, but its central force.
“If our African countries are to embrace any meaningful change, then we have to leverage on the young people,” he said.
But Fikirini also issued a challenge, drawing a line between access and impact that Mwende’s work is trying to close.
“It is one thing to get an opportunity and another to be able to leverage that particular opportunity so that we can make a difference,” he said.
For Mwende, the chatbot is that leverage. A small tool, built in an afternoon, by young people from across the social spectrum.
