Kenya's Fikra Launches AI Inference API for African Developers with M-Pesa Payments

Kenyan AI startup Fikra API has publicly launched its AI inference API designed specifically for African developers, startups, and businesses. The API is OpenAI-compatible, meaning developers can send requests and receive responses from large language models in the same way they would with OpenAI or Anthropic — but with pricing, payment methods, and token economics tailored for African markets.

Founded by James Miano earlier this year, Fikra API is fully bootstrapped. In an interview with Disrupt Africa, Miano highlighted the core problem: OpenAI and Anthropic require a minimum spend of around USD $20 before developers can access the API, which in Nairobi can represent close to a week's salary. Frontier model output pricing is also expensive and burns through tokens quickly, forcing constant top-ups. Furthermore, both major providers require a credit or debit card — a barrier for the majority of Africans who transact primarily via mobile money.

Fikra charges a flat rate of USD $1 per two million tokens, with no split between input and output pricing. Payment is handled through Paystack, which supports M-Pesa and mobile money across multiple African markets. The startup has also shipped two proprietary models: a custom embeddings model ready for inference, and Fikra Nano 1B, a ternary-weight fine-tuned model built in-house that Miano describes as a genuinely uncommon technical capability.

Currently active in Kenya with plans to scale continent-wide, Fikra onboarded its first 10 users within days of launch. The startup is pre-revenue and begins its commercial push at launch. Miano emphasized that any African developer with a smartphone and mobile money access is the target user, positioning Fikra as a potential catalyst for local AI application development across the continent.