In his keynote address at the recent Bowmans X Tech event in Nairobi, Stephen Chege, Group Chief Corporate and External Affairs Officer at Safaricom, noted that in a digital economy, geography is no longer destiny.
‘The size of your market is no longer determined by your population. It is determined by your ability to solve problems. Period.’
He further noted that ‘scale means taking what we have and going global. It means taking an idea born in East Africa and transforming it into a solution for Africa and potentially for the world.’
Citing M-Pesa’s massive impact and scale as an example, Chege explained that ‘M-Pesa processed 46 billion transactions during the last year, serving over 41 million active customers and facilitating transactions exceeding USD 316 billion, that is KSH42 trillion. This is approximately USD 865 million dollars a day. That is scale.’
Chege said M-Pesa was never designed as the global case study. ‘It started as a simple need to solve a societal challenge – how to make it easier for people to move money…Today it is studied around the world as one of the most successful financial inclusion innovations ever created.’
For Africa to complete globally, Chege noted, ‘One must think beyond individual markets. ‘The opportunity is not simply in Kenya or Tanzania or Uganda. It is Kenya connected to Uganda, connected to Tanzania, connected to Rwanda, connected to Ethiopia, and so on.’
He explained that in terms of regulation, the objective ‘should be to create guardrails that allow innovation to grow responsibly… not by preventing innovation, but by creating the conditions under which innovations can be trusted and can be scaled.’
Technology and law
Nairobi-based John Syekei, co-head of Technology at African law firm Bowmans noted that bringing industry stakeholders together across business, technology, investment and law was essential to examine the regulatory developments influencing the region’s digital economy.
He added that from AI and data centres to cloud services, technology has become an essential building block for most, if not all, businesses in East Africa – from micro, small and medium enterprises all the way through to large corporations.
‘The future of business in East Africa is being written at the intersection of technology and the law,’ he noted.
Robby Coelho, a partner at Bowmans in Cape Town, emphasised that legal strategy must evolve alongside modern business models and take local conditions in account.
He explained that technology was currently creating opportunities across markets, but the laws, institutions, regulators and market conditions remain local. Pursuing these opportunities across borders therefore requires both local understanding and the ability to connect advice, best practices and skills across all jurisdictions.
Technology also has different implications and considerations for different sectors.
‘Technology means something different in a bank than it does in a hospital, a mine, a retailer or a telecommunications company,’ he explained.
Coelho noted that Bowmans’ new multi-disciplinary approach to digital innovation – Bowmans X Tech – was designed to break down silos via a firm-wide approach to technology-related work in every sector.
Risk management
To protect and sustain this complex digital ecosystem, the various seminar panels outlined a comprehensive roadmap for long-term resilience, noting that tech businesses must combine innovation, legal risk management and regulatory engagement at the same time rather than sequentially.
For example, the Bowmans X Tech panel delegates outlined how companies must govern AI before they scale by adopting a risk-based approach. This includes establishing clear internal governance frameworks, building data discipline, managing ‘shadow AI’, protecting confidentiality and legal privilege against public-facing tools, and embedding compliance directly into product design, while maintaining critical human oversight.
The focus must also be on building the physical rails of the digital economy. Fibre, towers, data centre power and land access must be prioritised, alongside balancing content moderation, privacy rights and the complexities of regional regulatory fragmentation.
The delegates noted that to avoid disputes down the line, companies should protect assets early by using confidentiality clauses, non-disclosure agreements, restrictive covenants and trade secret audits. They should also secure clear chains of title, establish proper transfer pricing and tax structures early, and map AI and data use cases, such as mitigating bias in digital finance.
Collaboration
Bowmans’ co-head of Technology based in Johannesburg, Heather Irvine ,added that, as lawyers advise clients through mass AI adoption, structuring complex intellectual property assets, and modernising digital finance and payment systems, ‘our primary hurdle isn’t entrepreneurial vision, it’s mitigating the friction of fragmented tax regimes, exchange controls, and misaligned compliance models.’
‘Active collaboration between policymakers and the tech community will be what ensures that regulatory guardrails support, rather than obstruct, a thriving, inclusive digital ecosystem across East Africa,’ Irvine concluded.
