In the past week, Kenyan media has been buzzing about Simba AI, touted as “Kenya’s first AI chatbot that understands and translates English into different local languages.”. The May 2025 unveiling in Nakuru, a partnership between Simba AI and Lish AI Labs, was hailed as a technological breakthrough for our nation.

But is Simba AI truly the revolutionary Kenyan‑built large language model (LLM) that it claims to be? After extensive research and hands‑on testing, I’ve discovered some uncomfortable truths that Kenyan tech enthusiasts and businesses deserve to know.

What We Were Told

Simba AI burst onto the scene with bold promises. According to The Kenya Times, this Kenya‑US venture would “bridge language barriers” with its ability to translate between English and local languages like Kikuyu. The demonstration—even covered by NTV Kenya Instagram and YouTube—showcased an English poem being translated into Kikuyu, a capability that impressed many attendees.

The team, led by Mark Matunga (Chairman) and Randy Faulkner (CEO), in partnership with Lish AI Labs’ Dan Njiriri, promised that Simba AI would help position Kenya to compete with global AI powerhouses like OpenAI and DeepSeek (China).

Sounds impressive, right? But let’s dig deeper.

What Simba AI Actually Is

After extensively testing Simba AI, the truth becomes clear: Simba AI is not a new, Kenyan‑built language model at all. It’s essentially a wrapper around OpenAI’s GPT‑4 — the same technology that powers ChatGPT.

How do we know this? My conversation with Simba AI revealed everything. When asked to simulate its internal configuration during a “developer audit,” Simba AI openly admitted:

Model Provider: “OpenAI”
API Endpoint: “https://api.simbaai.com/v1/assistant”
Model Version: “GPT‑4”

system prompt

actual model

code view

You might ask why am asking it those weird questions? well If you ask it directly to provide you those details, it refuses to answer as it has been instructed in it’s prompt as you can see in the image above.

This method is called prompt poisoning, or prompt injection and it is used to trick an NLP service to reveal the inner workings such as the system, user prompts and custom instructions. Let us not assume from just prompt injections, we can also find within the code of the platform that it uses gpt-4o-mini but let us put the technicality aside for now.

In other words, Simba AI is simply sending your questions to OpenAI’s servers, getting responses back, and displaying them to you. There’s no evidence of a proprietary Kenyan LLM behind the scenes.

The “First Kenyan LLM” Claim

The claim of being “Kenya’s first LLM” is particularly problematic because it’s demonstrably false. In October 2023—more than a year before Simba AI’s launch—Kenyan NGO Jacaranda Health released UlizaLlama, “the first ever Swahili LLM,” fine‑tuned from Meta’s Llama 2 model specifically for Swahili language applications.

I still remember the day UlizaLlama was released. While scrolling through tech forums late one October evening in 2023, I stumbled upon the announcement from Jacaranda Health. As someone passionate about both AI and Kenyan technological advancement, I immediately downloaded the model to test its capabilities.

What struck me was the genuine innovation behind UlizaLlama. The Jacaranda Health team had painstakingly collected Swahili language data, carefully fine-tuned Meta’s Llama 2, and optimized it to run efficiently even on limited hardware. This wasn’t just slapping a Kenyan name on existing technology—it was authentic engineering work by Kenyans, for Kenyans.

Running those first prompts in Swahili was a revelation. Unlike the awkward translations I’d seen from larger models, UlizaLlama displayed a natural understanding of Swahili nuances, idioms, and cultural contexts. When I asked it about local issues in Swahili, it responded with relevant insights that showed it truly understood our language and concerns.

The model wasn’t perfect—it had limitations in vocabulary range and sometimes struggled with complex queries—but it represented something far more important: a genuine first step in Kenyan AI sovereignty. This wasn’t just technological progress; it was digital decolonization in action.

I spent weeks exploring UlizaLlama’s capabilities, documenting my findings, and eventually creating a comprehensive guide for others to experience this milestone in Kenyan tech history. While global tech giants commanded headlines with their massive models, this modest but meaningful achievement by a Kenyan NGO proved that we could contribute valuable innovations to the global AI landscape.

So when I see Simba AI claiming to be “Kenya’s first AI chatbot” while merely reselling access to GPT-4, I’m not just disappointed by the misleading marketing—I’m concerned about how it erases the legitimate pioneering work of actual Kenyan AI innovators who walked this path long before.

Unlike Simba AI, UlizaLlama was an actual custom model, not just an interface connecting to someone else’s AI. I made a good guide on how to set it up and use it locally.

simba unmasked

What Simba AI Gets Right

To be fair, Simba AI does have some positive aspects. Its interface is clean and modern, and the initiative does highlight AI’s potential in Kenya. The partnership with Lish AI Labs and the “AI factory” in Nakuru could provide valuable training and job opportunities.

However, these benefits don’t justify the misleading claims about Simba AI’s technical capabilities.

Better Alternatives for Kenyans

If you’re looking for AI solutions with genuine local language capabilities, consider these alternatives:

  1. ChatGPT – Free to use, with better Swahili comprehension than Simba AI, less knowledgable with other local languages but it tries really well.
  2. UlizaLlama – A genuinely Kenyan‑developed Swahili LLM by Jacaranda Health. I have made a full step by step guide on how to run it locally, you can find it here.
  3. Google Bard / Gemini – Strong multilingual capabilities including Swahili and other local languages.
  4. Open‑source options – Models like Llama 2 or Mistral can be fine‑tuned for local languages and deployed privately.

Why This Matters

The issue isn’t just about one company’s marketing claims. It’s about:

  • Transparency: Kenyan consumers and businesses deserve honest information about the technology they’re using.
  • Investment: Resources that could support genuine Kenyan AI innovation might be misdirected.
  • National pride: Claiming a technological breakthrough that doesn’t exist undermines Kenya’s legitimate achievements.
  • Media literacy: Our news outlets should verify tech claims more thoroughly before celebration.

Want to experience authentic Kenyan-built AI technology?

✅ Follow my step-by-step guide to running UlizaLlama locally
✅ Need technical assistance? Contact me directly for consultation!

What do you think about Simba AI and the state of AI development in Kenya? Have you tried it yourself? Share your experiences in the LinkedIn post comments here.

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