Alex Kirundi
Kenyan social entrepreneur Alex Kirundi has turned bandwidth and ambition into a boot-camp for Africa’s next generation of digital hustlers. In 2018 he launched Brains with Concepts, an online academy that teaches everything from video-editing hacks to growth-marketing tactics; five years on, the platform has trained more than 10,000 young people and employs 20 alumni as writers, product designers, and peer mentors. Kirundi’s model blends bite-sized lessons with paid client projects, so learners build portfolios while earning, and his community-led marketing challenges have already propelled dozens of graduates into full-time freelance careers or seed-funded start-ups.
Now pursuing a master’s in social entrepreneurship, Kirundi is layering analytics onto the curriculum to personalise learning paths and partnering with telcos to zero-rate course content in rural counties. Next on his roadmap: a mobile-first marketplace that matches trainees to global gig work and a pan-African fellowship that will embed the academy’s most promising creators in impact-driven SMEs. By insisting that “digital skills are the new land title,” Kirundi is working to ensure every African youth can stake a claim in the online economy and rewriting what opportunity looks like for a continent on the cusp of a demographic dividend.