Ken Banks

Founder of kiwanja

Ken Banks, Founder of kiwanja.net, devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change, and has spent the last two decades working on projects in Africa. His early research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, an award-winning text message communication system today powering thousands of social change projects in over 190 countries around the world. Since 2015 he has been focusing on publishing, speaking, mentoring, consultancy and developing a range of internal kiwanja.net projects including altruly, a new kind of mobile giving app.

Ken is a founding member of the British Government Department for International Development’s “Digital Advisory Board”. In late 2015 Ken was appointed CARE International’s first Entrepreneur in Residence, a role he held for two years. In addition to his own work, Ken mentors early-stage entrepreneurs through Pop!Tech and the Unreasonable Institute, and more seasoned entrepreneurs in the Ashoka network.
He is also well known for his writing and blogging on Africa, technology and innovation and his work has been published online by CNN, the BBC and the Guardian among others.

In April 2018 Ken closed down kiwanja.net to take on a full time role as Head of Social Impact at Yoti, a London-based startup developing an innovative digital identity platform. He is also a visiting Fellow at Cambridge Judge.