Nairobi research and innovation firm. Field research turned into tools, datasets, and papers.
Tools, datasets, and peer-reviewed work from the lab.
A synthesis of four architectural shifts that defined 2026: mixture of experts becoming the frontier standard, the return of linear state space models with Mamba 3, the formalization of agentic retrieval augmented generation, and the production lessons of multi agent orchestration. Each trend is examined for what it means on African hardware budgets.
An audit of what open source AI can actually do on low end devices with no internet: the hardware tiers, the quantization and runtime stack that makes small models viable, the models that fit each tier, and proven use cases from East Africa. Ends with tiered advice for building local AI systems for rural and informal sectors.
Open-source modular personal AI system with shared memory, multi-agent routing, and local inference. Runs offline using FAISS vector search, SQLite memory, and GGUF models.
Cross-platform mobile AI app designed for offline-first use in low-connectivity environments. Ships with Gemma 3B and TinyLlama GGUF models, RAG retrieval, and 4x memory-efficient vector storage via SQLite abstractions.
Flutter desktop productivity suite integrating static code scanning, WebSocket-based VS Code extension, and local semantic analysis. Demonstrates that real-time developer tooling can run on-device without cloud inference.
Knowledge distillation of a 7B parameter LLM into a 70M parameter GPT-style student model for on-device deployment. Covers synthetic data generation, logit-based distillation, quantization, and a working web interface.
Tawakkul Labs establishes the evidence base. Taw turns it into the software, AI, and digital systems that move East African businesses forward.
Research core
We design and conduct field research across East Africa, then publish the findings, datasets, and open source tools that inform serious decision making.
Explore the researchInnovation & development
We engineer the software platforms, AI automations, and digital marketing systems that take research from the lab to production, at speed and at scale.
Visit TawTawakkul Labs is a Nairobi based research and innovation firm. We conduct field research across East Africa and turn our findings into published work, open source tools, and datasets.
We exist to close the gap between academic research and the builders who need it most, so the next generation of African tools is built on local evidence.
Development is spearheaded by Taw, our innovation and engineering arm. It turns the lab's research into software, AI automations, and digital systems that scale.
Partner with usResearch first, tools second
We build open infrastructure for East African innovation. No proprietary lock in, no black boxes.
Research partners, implementers, funders, and open source contributors welcome.