kaikai
The kaikai team in navy polo shirts, in front of a yellow and blue wall
ABOUT · DAKAR · SINCE 2020

We build digital systems that create impact

kaikai is a digital transformation firm based in Dakar and working across Africa. We automate your processes, turn your data into decisions, train your teams on AI and monitor your buildings and air quality.

Where we come from

kaikai was founded in Dakar in 2020 by Nils Kaiser and Mamadou Djigo around a simple conviction: technology only counts when it changes something on the ground. Our purpose has not moved since. We put digital to work for impact that lasts and can be measured.

For six years we have worked with funders, public institutions and companies on digital health, agriculture, the environment and programme evaluation, in Senegal and in more than ten other African countries.

Today we bring that experience to companies: we automate processes, turn data into decisions, train teams on AI and measure air quality and energy use. Our signature sums it up: Innovating for a digital Africa.

OUR VALUES

KAIZEN, six values we work by

KAIZEN is the Japanese word for continuous improvement. At kaikai, it is also the initials of six values that shape the way we run our projects.

K

Kindness

We speak plainly and respectfully with clients, partners and each other. A ministry steering committee and a team of field technicians get the same courtesy and the same honesty.

A

Achiever

We commit to results we can deliver, then we deliver them: an automation that runs, sensors that report, a training people use the next day. Our Quick Win offers are designed to show a first result within days.

I

Innovative

We use what we sell. Automations, AI assistants, dashboards and IoT sensors run kaikai’s own operations before we propose them to a client.

Z

Zealous

We care about the details that make a project last: the sensor to recalibrate, the open data published every month, the report delivered on the agreed date.

E

Empathic

We start from the people who will use the system: the agent in a regional office, the school head who hosts a sensor, the finance team closing the month. We listen before we design.

N

Niokobok

Niokobok is Wolof for solidarity. We share what we learn: training at the end of every engagement, open air quality data, local partners on every project.

Pupils in uniform and adults posing at a school taking part in the air quality project

What that looks like in practice

Automations that give a team back hours every week. Dashboards a management committee actually uses. Air quality networks that keep reporting months after launch, with more than 40 sensors deployed in Senegal.

And at the end of every engagement, the training that lets your teams carry on without us. That part decides whether a project survives its first year.

See our offers: AI & Automation · IoT & Smart Buildings

OUR STORY

From a Dakar office to projects across Africa

Six years, told through the work that left something behind.

  1. 2020

    kaikai opens in Dakar

    The first missions set the tone: a digitalisation strategy for the GIZ ProAgri programme in Benin, and a survey of social impact organisations in 28 African countries for Facebook, now Meta, with 2,000 respondents in three languages.

    Working session at the kaikai office: three people around a table with their laptops, in front of a wall screen
  2. 2021

    Diagnosis before tooling

    With CGER Vallée and its three regional centres (Walo, Fouta, Matam), we start a digital transformation the way we still start them today: a baseline study, a digital diagnosis and an audit of business processes, before choosing any software.

    Diagnostic workshop at CGER: the team follows a projected presentation
  3. 2022

    Health data gets a common language

    With GIZ and Senegal’s Ministry of Health, we set out to show that hospitals and software vendors can exchange medical data through open IHE standards. A working group, training for decision-makers and technicians, then the first mini-connectathon in Senegal. The same year, we design a GIZ programme for the digital transformation of Togo’s economy. In November, we organise the Agrotech day in Saint-Louis with the Gaston Berger University incubator: producers, cooperatives, researchers, funders and seven startups on what digital can do for farming in the Senegal River valley.

    IHE mini-connectathon participants testing their systems on laptops in a meeting room
  4. 2023

    The method travels

    In Kinshasa and Kikwit, our workshops shape a knowledge-sharing platform for the DRC’s ministry of water and energy. In Sierra Leone, we train Ministry of Health staff on a health data quality tool. In Benin, we help design the extension of a programme to digitise public services. In October, at the Africa Health Tech Summit in Kigali, we share the lessons of the Senegal IHE project with more than 1,000 health and technology leaders from across the continent.

    Address from the podium at the Africa Health Tech Summit 2023 in Kigali, beneath giant screens
  5. 2024

    Dakar, Trieste, Kigali

    Three Senegalese e-health companies take part in the IHE Connectathon Europe in Trieste and test their software against European implementations. For GIZ headquarters, we launch a one-year One Health Analytics training programme in Rwanda and Senegal, we evaluate the Orange Digital Centers in eight countries, and we start measuring air pollution in Senegalese schools.

    The IHE Europe Connectathon 2024 hall in Trieste, where dozens of teams test their systems
  6. 2025

    Leaders trained, results measured

    With CJDI, we train the leaders of 12 Senegalese companies on AI and productivity tools. At CGER Vallée, the final evaluation closes four years of digital transformation with figures: 70% of agents active on Microsoft 365, 134 online meetings in twelve months, 23 training sessions since 2023. On the environment side, we sign a partnership protocol with DIREC, the environment ministry’s directorate for regulation, to make air pollution data available and support sensors in schools.

    Final evaluation session with CGER’s teams
  7. 2026

    Same rigour, new clients

    When a dust episode covers Senegal in February, our sensor network, from Richard-Toll to Ziguinchor, records it and we publish the analysis three weeks later. We train the teams of Djolof Assur, an insurance broker in Dakar, to use AI in their daily work, from client letters to insurance pricing. kaikai is accredited as a training provider by 3FPT, Senegal’s vocational training fund, and our air quality project in Diamaguène Sicap Mbao receives a 2026 EPIC Air Quality Fund Award from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

    A city under a sky hazy with dust during the Harmattan episode

THEY TRUST US

  • Amazon
  • Meta
  • Bénin Numérique
  • C2O
  • Cap Digital
  • CGER
  • CJDI
  • GIZ
  • Djolof Assur
  • Dakar Institute of Technology
  • AVS
  • Rufisque
  • Santé Sénégal
  • TACTIS
  • Airgradient Logo

Tell us what you are trying to change.

A first conversation costs nothing and usually clarifies more than a specification.