As Kenya and the wider East African region solidify their positions as some of Africa’s most dynamic and active digital markets, business leaders, technology pioneers and legal experts have called for tighter collaboration between the innovators and the regulators.
Opening the recent Bowmans X Tech inaugural event, John Syekei, co-head of Technology based in Nairobi, noted an important shift underway in the region. ‘The future of business in East Africa is being written at the intersection of technology and the law,’ he said.
Syekei emphasised 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.
This rapid transformation does not come without challenges. Syekei 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.
‘With this transformation comes important, urgent, sometimes uncomfortable questions,’ he said.
The glocal paradox
Addressing the complexities of cross-border scaling, Bowmans’ partner based in Cape Town, Robby Coelho, noted that legal strategy must evolve alongside modern business models and take account of local conditions.
Coelho said that while technology was currently creating opportunities across markets, the laws, institutions, regulators and market conditions remain local. Therefore, pursuing these opportunities across borders requires both local understanding and the ability to connect advice, best practices and skills across all jurisdictions.
Coelho noted further that technology also had 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. We believe legal advice has to reflect that.’
Coelho outlined Bowmans’ new multi-disciplinary approach to digital innovation, highlighting that Bowmans X Tech was designed to break down silos via a firm-wide approach to technology-related work in every sector.
‘It brings together the right legal, sector and market expertise around what each client wants to achieve – the client’s opportunity or challenge determines the team,’ he explained.
‘Pursuing a technology-related opportunity triggers multiple areas of law simultaneously, so our initiative uses the ‘X’ to reflect both the cross-practice and multi-disciplinary approach to delivering tech-related services across the full lifecycle of any initiative and to represent the multiplication of value that this enables for our clients. That strategic multiplication forms the foundation of sustainable growth.’
Path to scale
Addressing the path to scale in his keynote address at the Bowmans X Tech event in Nairobi, Stephen Chege, group chief corporate and external affairs officer at Safaricom, 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.’
Chege explained 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.’
Citing M-Pesa’s massive impact and scale as an example, he noted 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 explained that 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 believes, ‘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.’
When it comes to regulation, Chege believes the objective should not be to regulate innovation out of existence. Rather, ‘it 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.’
Shifting the narrative toward physical infrastructure and its impact on market success, Fred Waithaka, director, regulatory and public policy at Safaricom, used a biological metaphor to describe the digital ecosystem.
The digital economy ‘doesn’t sit neatly in a box,’ he said. It’s ‘like a living organism that is both local and international but deeply interconnected…. You have the platform layer that determines how content will be created, distributed and moderated. You have the connectivity layer …the active and passive elements , and bandwidth … Think of it almost like a human body.. . [with] people at the heart of it.’
Roadmap
To protect and sustain this complex ecosystem, one panellist 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.
Key takeaways from the various panels included that 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.
Further, the focus must 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 also discussed how, 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.
A thriving ecosystem
Closing the discussion, Bowmans’ co-head of Technology based in Johannesburg, Heather Irvine stressed that regulatory certainty is critical to attracting investment without blocking innovation.
Irvine noted 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.’
‘Further, delivering connectivity and digital services means factoring in real-world infrastructure constraints, from power and water shortages to nuanced content moderation frameworks. ‘
However, she explained that the challenge for both policymakers and advisors lies in an important balancing act. She asked, ‘Are we designing precise guardrails that protect consumers and build market trust, or are we inadvertently introducing compliance roadblocks by transplanting foreign frameworks that fail to account for local market realities?’
She concluded, ‘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.’
