Hack4Freedom Nairobi: Our Biggest Cohort Yet

Nairobi, Kenya · September 22 – October 4, 2026 · 55 builders · 10 teams

Bitcoin adoption is not the bottleneck. In Nairobi, one of the most active bitcoin communities on the continent, people are already earning, saving, and transacting in bitcoin every day. The bottleneck is builders: fewer than 3% of open-source contributors globally are women, and Africa as a whole makes up less than 3% of the developers on GitHub. Even in Kenya, one of its fastest-growing developer communities, women remain underrepresented in the rooms where bitcoin gets built.

That gap is the whole reason Hack4Freedom exists. Kaduna trained the first 20. Lagos scaled it to 38. São Paulo proved it travels across a continent. Nairobi, our first Kenyan program delivered on the ground with Dada Devs, funded by Btrust, with the Nostr prize and AI tooling from Soapbox, was the biggest test yet: roughly 55 builders, our largest cohort ever!

Learning, Connecting, and Building With Purpose

The kickoff week set the tone. Brianna Honkawa d'Estries opened the program with why this work matters: bitcoin is for everyone, and globally the majority of the unbanked are women, so women cannot just be users of the technology — they have to be builders too. Then Lorraine Marcel, founder of Dada Devs, shared her philosophy: build from Africa. Africa doesn’t just need more people using technology, it needs more people building it, and she challenged the cohort to create with open-source protocols like bitcoin, Lightning, Nostr, and eCash.

Sharon Murugi of Btrust Builders followed with a session on building in public, and how sharing your work early creates opportunities, connections, and visibility. Hanan Ibrahim of the Groundswell Project board, who runs a community supporting women refugees, spoke on the power of women working together. Sabina Waithira Gitau and Jason, co-founders of Tando, shared the story of building their startup: taking risks, betting on themselves, and stepping outside their comfort zones. And Sekinah Ibrahim, Hack4Freedom’s director, closed out day one with a session on commitment, reminding the cohort that building means showing up, learning, and doing the work even when the results aren’t visible yet. Because in this space, proof of work isn’t just a protocol concept. It’s a mindset.

Then the cohort got to work. Over two weeks they learned directly from:

• Halima Abba — what financial freedom actually requires: translating self-custody, wallets, and savings into practical, everyday use.
• Wandia Mugo — Bitcoin Plain Talk, her community-driven glossary translating bitcoin jargon into plain English and Kiswahili, plus her work bringing AI to African languages.
• Frankline Omondi — a guide to open-source contribution: spotting the right opportunities, landing reviews, and navigating Bitcoin Core as a newcomer.
• M.K. Fain — Nostr 101 plus a hands-on workshop building with open-source AI tools like Shakespeare and OpenCode.
• Sharon Nkatha — inside bitcoin mining: how blocks, proof-of-work, and mining pools actually secure the network.
• Susan Githaiga — finding your first issue and landing your first merged pull request, and building the habits to keep contributing.
• Mercy Njeri Mbao — how to get started contributing to bitcoin open source, from picking the right project to shipping a first PR.
• Claire Parkinson — what makes a winning project, and how to build a durable career in tech as a woman.
• Oladimeji "Timileyin" Bamidele — designing bitcoin for humans: why UX decides whether people actually use bitcoin products.
• Simon Njeru — open hardware and firmware in bitcoin mining, and why the ecosystem needs more open-source builders working on it.
• Brandon Odiwuor — from first test to merged PR: a hands-on Bitcoin Core contribution workshop.
• Sadiq Rabiu — from first commit to confident contributor: navigating repositories, working with maintainers, and using AI to learn faster.
• Tuedon Tuoyo — decoding bitcoin transactions: inputs, outputs, and how value moves across the network.
• Mark Kamau — design mentorship sessions for the cohort's projects.
• Mogashni Naidoo — user testing 101 for bitcoin products.
• Amiti Uttarwar — the human side of open source: her story as bitcoin core's first female contributor, and walking the cohort through the anxieties developers face.

To every mentor who gave their time to this cohort: thank you. You opened up Bitcoin Core internals, walked first-time contributors through their first commit, and taught design, product, security, and everything in between. Hack4Freedom runs on mentors, and Nairobi's lineup showed up for these builders every single day. None of this happens without you.

Soapbox's Shakespeare AI credits ran through the program from day one, and it showed up in the projects themselves.

The Winning Projects

On demo day, every team took the stage and pitched to a panel of judges from across the bitcoin ecosystem. Four prizes were on the table: $2,000 for first place, $1,000 for second, $500 for third, and a $1,000 Nostr prize. Here's what won.

1st Place ($2,000) — ANZA. Creators shouldn't have to wait to be chosen before their work creates value, but licensing today gives them no way to make the first move. ANZA is open creator-licensing infrastructure: creators define their terms and sign offers as Nostr events, brands pay over Lightning before delivery, and every transaction becomes a verifiable public record. Built by Team Node One: Irene Mukii, Nady, Aisha, Jennifer, and Miriam.

2nd Place ($1,000, plus an honorable mention prize from Lorraine Marcel) — Resilience. Survivors of gender-based violence can't safely seek help on platforms that demand a name, phone number, or email, because that data can be used against them. Resilience is a privacy-first support platform where the account is a Nostr keypair generated on the device — no phone number, no email, nothing to subpoena — with end-to-end encrypted conversations with verified counselors and Lightning payouts settled in KES over M-Pesa. Built by Team Nostr Warriors: Vanessa Kalondu, Adreen Nyawira Githinji, Wambugu Jane Rose Muthoni, Nelly Nakhero, Mona Tanei, Grace Mugoiri, and Daisy Sawe.

3rd Place ($500) — MIKI. Confirming a payment on screen is impossible for visually impaired users and impractical at busy market stalls or hands-free kiosks. MIKI adds a voice layer to Lightning payments: an invoice is generated through Lightning node APIs (LNbits, Alby, or LNDHub), approved in a WebLN wallet, and on settlement the backend verifies it and speaks the confirmation aloud. Built by Riziki, Idah, Joy, Vanessa, Edith, and Vera.

Nostr Prize ($1,000) — Nuru Women. Reliable, private, locally relevant health information is hard to reach for women facing stigma, misinformation, and language barriers. Nuru Women is a privacy-first women's health platform: women ask sensitive questions anonymously — no account, email, or phone number — and get guidance in English or Kiswahili across five health areas, from menstrual health to mental health. Questions publish through Nostr with one-time signing keys, and the team built a research-gap visualization spanning 53 African countries to show where the evidence itself is missing. Built by Rose Njuguna, Britney Kibaara, Casey Otieno, Anastacia Ngure, Joylizza Mwangi, Prudence Ngigi, and Joy Kibui, with Shakespeare AI.

Every Project Built Something Real

Choosing winners from this cohort was genuinely hard. Every team found a real problem in their community and built a working answer with bitcoin at the center, and the judges had their work cut out for them. The four winners above earned it. The six below belong on your radar just as much:

• Sauti — Sauti gives writers a pseudonymous identity tied to a Nostr key they hold, paid in sats over Lightning or in KES over M-Pesa, so a book that criticizes power never costs a writer their job or freedom. Built by Donisia Muthiani.
• Safaripap — Matatu fares paid by M-Pesa expose your balance and messages to the conductor, and owners have no record of what the vehicle earned. Safaripap lets passengers scan a QR code and settle each fare instantly over Lightning, with a public receipt event to Nostr so earnings can be audited. Built by Team Lady Lightning: Linnette, Rose Wachuka, Elizabeth Nanjala, and Aisha Barasa.
• PesaSense — Kenyans curious about bitcoin have no safe way to know what they can afford to save. PesaSense builds a private, on-device profile from M-Pesa history that shows a safe surplus range and grows a bitcoin habit in a non-custodial Spark wallet. Built by Immaculate Munde, Mercy Wairimu, Blessings Wanjiku, Leonida Jeptoo, and Gathoni Karume.
• Taska — AI can sound fluent in an African language while getting the meaning completely wrong. Taska routes responses to local evaluators, double-checks their work, and pays them over Lightning. Built by Florence Makaa and Stacy Kweto.
• BillBridge — cross-border fundraising for school and hospital bills in Kenya, with every bill verified and paid directly over Lightning. Built by Doris Olela, Beth Kinyanjui, Christine Kilonzo, Lucy Mwaura, Amy Wathira, and Jael Bahati.
• Spill — Local stories in low-connectivity communities go undocumented. Spill is an offline-first journalism platform on Nostr where people discover and discuss local stories even without reliable internet. Built by Lucy.

👩‍💻 All submissions live at github.com/hack-4-freedom/nairobi-2026.

A Future Being Built

Four cities. Three countries. 140 builders. 40 open-source projects. We set out to build a global community of women building bitcoin and freedom tech, and that is exactly what is taking shape: a vibrant, connected network of female builders from all around the world. And we're just getting started. Port Harcourt's dates will be announced soon, and we have so much planned for 2027.

The goal has never been a hackathon. It's 100+ women from the global majority working in freedom tech, and every cohort makes the network bigger.

Thank you to Btrust for funding the program, to Soapbox for the Nostr prize and the AI tooling, to the Dada Devs team for delivering on the ground, to Sekinah Ibrahim for holding the program together, and to every mentor who showed up for these builders.

When women build, freedom follows.