Three businesses, one Kenyan consumer, three very different answers. Willy Kimani left Naivas to build Jaza Supermarket, a neighborhood affordable supermarket chain that sells on WhatsApp. Anne Kinuthia-Otieno built Airtel Money Kenya and now runs Visa across East Africa. Jacques Theunissen turned KFC's regional franchise from 30 loss-making restaurants into more than 70. I moderated their discussion panel during Glovo Kenya's Future of Commerce Summit yesterday and asked what it takes to be built to win.

Recorded live at the Radisson Blu, Upper Hill, Nairobi on 23rd October 2026, this episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast is the full opening panel of the summit. In it: why a KES 5,000 phone has no room for another app and what that means for every retailer in Kenya; why KFC's self-service digital kiosks lift the average basket by 10 to 30 per cent and are as popular in Kakamega as in Westlands; what tokenization is, explained with a casino chip; how a weekly digital payment turns a cash business into a bankable one; what Visa is doing about AI agents that want to check out for you; and the one capability each panelist says a Kenyan business must build in the next twelve months.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Opening question: the moment a customer showed you the way they buy had changed

00:35 Willy Kimani: the Tuskys customer who wanted her shopping carried to the car

02:28 Anne Kinuthia-Otieno: an 18-year-old orders his school kit online from abroad

03:58 Jacques Theunissen: "convenience actually is time"

06:04 Gen Z wants control: self-service kiosks and a 10 to 30 per cent bigger basket

06:47 Willy: Uchumi's lost idea, the gap between the kiosk and the hypermarket, and Jaza's 34 stores

10:08 Anne: from dressing up for the bank to a card you leave at home

14:13 Jacques: every channel is growing, customers order three times a day, and the three rules

18:59 KFC in Sandton: from a special occasion to a utility

20:27 Willy: why Jaza sells on WhatsApp and not an app, and what to rent from Glovo

24:05 Willy: the direct API integration with Glovo

24:52 Anne: the digital gaps holding small businesses back, the cost of cash, and the casino chip

29:48 A transactional history is the path to credit

30:53 Anne: Visa Accept and overdrafts timed to a trader's best days

32:44 Jacques: which technology paid back fastest, integration, and kiosks in Kakamega

37:17 Audience: why are banking apps so bad? Visa Pay and the SDK answer

40:33 Audience: is e-commerce cannibalising Jaza's stores?

42:45 Audience: what is Visa doing about agentic commerce? 89 per cent, 29 per cent and single-use cards

48:08 Closing question: one capability to build in the next 12 months. Drones, integration, people

50:38 Close

THE PANEL

Willy Kimani is the Founder of Jaza Supermarket, the neighborhood affordable supermarket chain he started in December 2023, now at 34 stores across Nairobi. He was Chief Commercial Officer of Naivas for seven years, Chief Operating Officer of Uchumi, and a senior leader at Tuskys, and is the Immediate Past Chairman of the Retail Trade Association of Kenya.

Anne Kinuthia-Otieno, MBS, is Vice President and Head of East Africa at Visa, responsible for seven markets. She was Managing Director of Airtel Money Kenya for nearly five years, growing it from around 400,000 to more than five million active users, after a decade in retail and SME banking at Barclays and Absa.

Jacques Theunissen is Chief Executive Officer of Kuku Foods East Africa, the KFC franchisee for the region. He took over a loss-making business of just over 30 restaurants in 2020; it now runs more than 70, employs over 1,600 people and sources 99 per cent of its inputs locally.

GLOVO KENYA

Website: https://glovoapp.com/ke/

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ke/app/id951812684

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glovo

Not every episode of the Pure Digital Passion Podcast is recorded in a studio. This one was recorded a few weeks ago on a phone, audio only, at a restaurant table in Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya with Klaas Glenewinkel, Managing Director of MiCT (Media in Cooperation and Transition) in Berlin and Director of the East Africa Radio Service (EARS) in Kampala, Uganda.

Seven years ago Klaas decided that aid money was not the answer to keeping Africa's local radio stations alive, revenue was. EARS now bundles small and rural stations across Uganda into audience packages that advertisers can buy on one package instead of 150, and Klaas says it shared almost USD 2 million in advertising revenue with those stations last year. His argument is simple: in the ratings, the stations filed under "others" would be the market leader if they were one station.

Now EARS is going digital with a lightweight audio app that aggregates radio stations, podcasts and audiobooks, streams at as little as 8 kilobits per second, lets listeners download overnight when data is cheaper, and is funded by targeted pre-stream advertising rather than subscriptions. The app is in closed Android testing, the server has never been pushed past 100 concurrent listeners, and it does not yet have a name. So we spent the last ten minutes attempting to name it!

We also get into why radio refuses to die (in Uganda and in Germany), the gateway problem of big tech preloaded on cheap phones, my Gen Z Uber driver who still buys the newspaper to save data, what the platform means for podcasters like me, and how I actually make money from a podcast in Kenya.

If you run a radio station, publish podcasts or audiobooks, or buy audio advertising in East Africa, this one is for you.

CHAPTERS

(00:12) Welcome: an impromptu, audio-only episode from Westlands

(00:41) Why aid money was failing local media, and the birth of EARS

(01:13) One contract instead of 150: how EARS bundles small stations

(02:36) "Others" is the market leader: the long tail of local radio

(04:44) Almost USD 2 million shared with stations last year

(05:48) The threat from religious radios and why independence matters

(06:53) Analogue ad spend, cheaper smartphones and the FM chip

(07:57) Why radio endures, in Uganda and in Germany

(09:36) Big tech on the phone: Facebook Zero and net neutrality

(11:09) The Gen Z Uber driver who still buys the newspaper

(12:23) An app built for 8 kilobits: overnight downloads and offline listening

(13:27) Where the app stands: Android testing, West Africa and the diaspora

(15:04) Advertising, not subscriptions: targeted pre-stream audio ads

(16:35) The 100-listener question: a bootstrapped build

(17:43) The flywheel: stations promote the app on air

(18:52) The end game: survival of local radio, then West Africa

(20:14) Calling all publishers, stations and podcasters: RSS syndication

(21:27) How I actually make money from a podcast in Kenya

(24:40) Kenya's podcast scene, and what the youth want on demand

(26:40) Name the app: six candidates on the table

(28:17) My verdict: Ongea, Oyodo, and why I fight with "cast"

(31:42) The Ongair idea: speak, over the air

(32:40) Jambo Cast and the French-speaker test

(35:20) How EARS sells: brands, governments, aid agencies and ad agencies

(36:39) Twenty people on the ground, one deal at a time

(37:04) Close

Guest links:

EARS - https://www.ears.ug/

MiCT - https://mict-international.org/

Klaas Glenewinkel on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/klaas-glenewinkel-a7a69b6/