Two Cheques: Kenyan Firms Take KSh 12.90 Million Each in a Prize

Two Kenyan firms each took home a grant of $100,000, about KSh 12.90 million at KSh 129 to the dollar, and neither had to sell a share to get it.

FINCA said on 7 October that VunaPay won the fintech prize and Kumbatia Seafood won the food-systems prize in its 2026 competition. Six firms shared $400,000, about KSh 51.60 million. Second place was $60,000, about KSh 7.74 million, and third was $40,000, about KSh 5.16 million. More than 700 firms applied.

Finalists pitched on 6 October in San Francisco. VunaPay was co-founded by Gatwiri Njogu-Mokaya and Koya Matsuno. Kumbatia was co-founded by Bernard Iha Thoya, Will Gertler and Nelson Ondego Mumata.

VunaPay pays smallholder farmers through cooperatives. Matsuno said there are about 54,000 cooperatives in Africa, each with between 500 and 10,000 farmers. Kumbatia buys and sells fish from small boats on the Swahili coast. Gertler said the money will go to working capital and a sales desk, with a hope of reaching a dozen more communities by 2030. That last line is a plan, not a result.

A grant is not the KSh 75 billion quarter

Fifty-eight startups raised $582.81 million in the three months to September, about KSh 75.18 billion. The FINCA cheques are small beside that. They are also a different instrument. A venture round prices a company and dilutes the founders. A prize does not.

For a farmer waiting on a cooperative payment, KSh 12.90 million is a float, not a change in the price of maize. For a fisher, it is ice, fuel and a buyer. The test is whether the money is still there in a year, after the sales desk is hired.