I'm typing this in the middle of a five-day blackout that's crippled operations at my digital platform. Yes, I run it alone.

During that period, I've had to leave my house more often than necessary just to charge my phone and my laptop, as well as find a WiFi spot that's been mainly coffee restaurants, because the majority of co-working spaces are priced beyond my reach (I've never seen one that's affordable to the ordinary Kenyan).

Using money that I've not budgeted for, and struggling to catch up to the day's developments. I've hit my lowest point in five years, all because of Kenya Power.

Five days of sitting in darkness non-stop, consigned to the fact that I probably lost clients, potential paid partnerships and the ability plus morale to keep up to date with the stories of this long weekend, Madaraka Day included. What is worse is that my rivals and critics have probably thought they've won. 

Photo of a laptop and a phone at an office. /BUSINESS RADAR

Anywho, working from home has gained prominence since the COVID-19 period, but Kenya Power makes it as if we are still living like we're in 2010!

In recent years, Kenya has witnessed a surge in remote work, driven by technological advancement, rising internet penetration, and a global shift toward flexible work models. From Nairobi to Nakuru, professionals have slowly embraced the home office as a viable alternative to the traditional 9-to-5 workplace. 

Freelancers, online journalists and editors, digital marketers, developers, and virtual assistants are reshaping the workforce, proving that productivity doesn’t have to be tethered to physical office spaces. But this transformation is under threat — not from a lack of talent or ambition, but from something as basic as electricity. 

Kenya’s unreliable power supply has emerged as a silent yet crippling enemy of remote work. Frequent blackouts, often lasting hours, days, weeks, even months, are killing productivity, morale, and the dream of a digitally empowered workforce.

Despite the push for digital transformation and innovation hubs, millions of Kenyans working from home face the daily uncertainty of when — or if — they’ll have power.

It is not uncommon for neighbourhoods to go dark multiple times a week, without prior notice. For many, these outages happen during peak working hours, cutting off access to the internet, disrupting meetings, and rendering laptops and mobile devices useless once the battery dies.

The most affected are independent workers — freelancers, online business owners, and journalists — who don’t have the luxury of office generators or institutional support. They operate from their homes or modest setups where the only power backup might be a power bank or candlelight. Each blackout doesn't just pause work; it unravels plans, deadlines, and income.

One of the greatest casualties of these frequent power outages is productivity. Deadlines slip. Clients grow impatient. Stories go unwritten. Emails go unsent. Momentum is lost. In remote work, where time is directly tied to income and reputation, every hour without electricity is a tangible loss.

But the cost is not just professional — it is psychological. Imagine working on a story or project only for your laptop to shut down mid-sentence because there's no power and your backup battery has died. 

Imagine missing a job interview because your router went off five minutes before the call. 

The frustration builds. The helplessness eats away at your morale.

For many remote workers, burnout no longer stems from overworking but from trying to work and failing because of infrastructure failure. The mental toll of knowing that your future and success are vulnerable to the whims of an unreliable power grid is exhausting.

Government narratives often celebrate Kenya as a tech-savvy nation — the Silicon Savannah. Mobile money innovation, tech hubs and the spread of fibre-optic connectivity are all rightly praised. But this optimism often ignores a foundational flaw: electricity is still a luxury for many. The irony is glaring. 

You can have the best laptop, the fastest internet plan, and a strong work ethic, but none of it matters when your socket has no power.

In a digital economy, power is oxygen. Without it, the talk of online entrepreneurship, remote opportunities, and a vibrant creator economy becomes performative, at least for those outside privileged urban bubbles with backup power and inverters.

Power blackouts don’t affect everyone equally. While large companies and wealthier individuals can afford generators, inverters, and solar systems, most Kenyans cannot. This turns access to consistent electricity into a class issue.

Young people in informal settlements, rural towns, or middle-class estates are often locked out of digital opportunities not because they lack skill or ambition, but because they simply can’t stay online long enough to participate. The dream of remote work becomes a privilege rather than an equaliser.

Women, who are more likely to work from home due to caregiving responsibilities, are disproportionately affected. For a single mother trying to freelance or build an online brand from home, a day without power can mean losing clients, gigs, or even the motivation to continue.

Online forums and social media are full of stories that rarely make it to mainstream headlines. A video editor in Kisumu who lost a client because he couldn’t deliver a project on time. A content creator in Meru who missed a scheduled YouTube premiere. I, a digital journalist in Nairobi who had to kill a breaking news story because the power went out and mobile data was too weak to upload it on time.

These are not rare exceptions — they are daily realities for thousands of Kenyan professionals whose careers now depend on steady electricity.

If Kenya truly wants to embrace the future of work, the government, Kenya Power and the private sector must prioritise power stability as a core part of the remote work infrastructure. This isn’t just about lighting homes — it’s about enabling economic participation.

Here are a few recommendations to the monopoly power firm (because there's no one out there to challenge them):

1. Upgrade the national grid with investments aimed at reducing unplanned outages, especially in high-density residential areas.
2. Expand access to affordable solar solutions, especially for low-income earners and remote workers.
3. Create incentives for co-working spaces to serve as power-secure hubs for remote workers in underserved towns, sub-counties, counties and cities.
4. Increase transparency and communication from Kenya Power, including timely updates on blackouts and estimated restoration times, if they even care to listen.
5. Support local manufacturing and distribution of small, affordable inverters and battery packs suited for single-person use.

Kenya has the talent, tools, and ambition to thrive in a remote-first world. But without stable electricity, we are sabotaging our potential.

Every blackout isn’t just a flicker in the grid — it’s a dimming of someone’s dream, someone’s deadline, someone’s dignity.

The future of work is digital, but it cannot run on hope alone. It needs power. And until Kenya solves the blackout crisis, working from home will remain an uphill battle for those who dare to build outside the traditional systems.

Marvin Chege is the founder and editor-in-chief of Viral Tea. He is a self-taught digital journalist and a young digital media expert with over 5 years of experience creating content that mainly concerns the youth: zillennials and Gen Z. 

DISCLAIMER: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by this writer are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of Viral Tea.

On Monday, July 8, the Kenya Media Sector Working Group (KMSWG) announced its bid to enhance coverage of what has been viewed as a critical segment of Kenya's vibrant society through various media platforms. According to a press statement, the group is mulling plans to set up a platform where Gen Zs, among all Kenyans, will engage on how best to shape the country, moving forward.

My point of interest is the following quote: "We will shortly announce a comprehensive plan to develop a platform where Kenyans including Gen-Zs will engage on critical issues affecting the nation."

Let's go down further to what I reported; "However, it is yet to be determined if the platform will operate through both mainstream and digital media platforms as well as social media and whether established media channels, upcoming ones, or both, will be considered in its development."

What KMSWG needs to answer in their comprehensive plan to develop the platform is what is there above...will the platform be hosted on social media, like X Spaces, Facebook...or TikTok, or will media platforms be considered?

The protests that were started on Tuesday, June 18 brought Gen Z to the national limelight for the very first time. Thousands of Kenyans, mainly the youth (Millennials and Gen Z), took to the streets of Nairobi to protest against the 2024 Finance Bill, showcasing the real power of the biggest population demographic in the whole country.

You're talking about the very same group that forms our largest audience across our website and our social media accounts, and the numbers show. Photos and short videos covering the protests alone were shared across all social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram...and for the first time, baddies suspended breaking men's necks offline and on Instagram, to protest against the Finance Bill.

June 20 and then June 25 (which I attended), and the Finance Bill was dropped. The power of Kenya's youth worked to the point that political figures who dismissed their demands for action ate their words. President Ruto then held more pressers at State House than possibly any other Head of State in Kenya, with radical changes, including the big one you began to read here.

How Did We Get Here?

Back to that 'platform'. Social media has become the main environment for millennials and Gen Z and while KMSWG might be on to something proper, there's the question of who should host/talk about that platform to the masses.

For more than a decade, mainstream media and the leading digital media platforms have been ruling the media space, but the turbulent times, especially among the former, have led to a decline in advertising revenue and ultimately, drastic decisions such as doing away with departments and firing journalists...hug anyone you see in media.

Freezing hirings or opting not to advertise job openings (if so, they come with weird requirements that show how your numbers on social media are like your CV) has made established journalists set up their own media platforms, mostly digital.

The space has become so saturated...like owning a boda boda...that people still don't believe me when I tell them that I run Viral Tea in a tough environment, competing against more than 5,000-10,000 news websites in Kenya.

Despite being an upcoming digital media house, Viral Tea, a rapidly rising platform in the 2020s decade, has told numerous stories of Gen Zs making their mark in whatever sector in the country, from entrepreneurship to the media space itself while building a platform that caters to the demands of Gen Zs and millennials- our biggest audience. So far, I'm proud that we've established a connection with the biggest digital media platform in the country, but it doesn't stop there.

For the extended part. Nobody has said this, but I'll say it...we are under fire. Take a look at this clip:

Was posted earlier somewhere but allow me to address this...it looks like a threat to reporters on the ground.

If only these ones knew the bureaucracy that goes on in Kenyan media newsrooms...especially mainstream pic.twitter.com/cnCORAWCDK

— Marvin Chege (@marvin_chege10) July 13, 2024

When I watched it, the first thing that came to mind is what I've done wrong. My platform had been following up on the Kware killings from the moment news broke out from it, relying on real-time media reports to get the tally on the number of bodies recovered and the first thing that someone who only watches TV and listens to radio is...we are lying. How I wish he knew what goes on in newsrooms of the leading media houses...there will come a time where journalists too will 'drain the swamp'.

But therein lies the problem. We've become so used to expecting so much from mainstream because we follow them every single day, which isn't a bad thing...and worshipping social media as a disruptor but failed to see that digital news and media platforms exist, which I can say without fear or favour, do more than three times what mainstream guys do.

There's no doubt that the leading digital media platforms such as TUKO.co.ke have done wonders in raising the bar for digital media, as they started when many Gen Zs were in high school or university...when social media in the country was starting to gain serious momentum.

COVID-19 changed everything and with digital disruption, mass layoffs across the media space and financial difficulties that could not allow media houses to hire and train new journalists, upcoming ones such as Viral Tea were born.

For four years, since the start of the 2020s, these platforms have been ignored by many, hence my bold call that it is time for upcoming digital media platforms to take over, be empowered more and for the big boys to step aside for once, mainstream included. They are already big platforms, so it would be insane for them to keep being empowered while the upcoming ones are left to waste away.

I'm saying that if KMSWG chooses the media in terms of what they want to do with the platform, they should first come to the newcomers like Viral Tea to get the word out there. First of all, we are the fastest-growing Kenyan digital media house on LinkedIn, doubling to more than 20,000 followers...three years after beginning in 2021...covering content that at times you will get nowhere else.

There is a saying that when you empower your underperforming employees at work, you'll get the best out of them compared to giving the star performers more work which brings devastating results; you lose your best performers AND your underperformers. That's the same case here.

Why Pay Attention To Us?

Kenyans deserve to pay more attention to the upcoming digital news and media platforms, not just because that's where the real juice is. I have seen Kenyan media being accused of being biased, and sleeping with the ruling political class among others...but this is because they have been so used to consuming content from leading platforms and ignoring the rest...others turn to bloggers and influencers who have a large following and think they're 'credible'...without training, even if it is 'self-taught'.

I can proudly say that since my stint at Kenyans.co.ke as an intern in 2020 for two months, I've been a self-taught digital journalist...learning from online sources, not really someone to hold my hand as a mentor since February of that year. I'm still learning, despite some 'plause', as I feel I still have a long way to go.

For me to pen an opinion/editorial (in this case) article on my very own platform instead of through the newspapers which to be honest take a lot of time to approve and publish shows the value of taking upcoming platforms in Kenya seriously.

However, just because the upcoming media platforms are small doesn't mean they don't have their own policies. For instance, we at Viral Tea check each and EVERY single pitch that comes our way, verify and use it in our stories or social media content, all at once...even though we are independent, we prize credibility as our 'main bae'. Truth is as staple as a plate of ugali in this country and just a note; we do not consider pitches on anything that we find to be defamatory. I gave you those tips for free today lol.

A good way to empower the upcoming digital media platforms is through collaborations/partnerships. To quote my fellow digital media friend Oliver Mathenge in one of his newsletters:

"There will be a wave of consolidation in Kenyan media, as smaller publications team up or merge to take on bigger competitors. While there may be employment losses as a result of this, there may also be chances for creative cross-platform content development and collaboration."

In one of my comments, I indicated that Kenyan media houses have shown how allergic they are to collaborations or partnerships on a consistent basis, hence the only hope for such is within the smaller publications. And no, the Presidential Debates series is not enough.

The conflicting numbers across media platforms and even government authorities such as the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) regarding the Kware bodies discovery have caused distrust between the media and members of the public, the latter threatening to 'occupy media houses', which to me is a dangerous precedent. If only we teamed up to give the real numbers...

Also to note, the division is also internal in the media space; that is mainstream vs digital, young journalists vs old veterans...Kenyan media is as unstable internally as it is externally. Why can't we just get along here?

Anywho, the call involves than just teaming up, it's time for the big companies in other sectors to give more attention to the smaller publications and for stakeholders to invest in them so that they can grow their craft as well as hire and train the upcoming Gen Z journalists to not just align them with modern office and work culture but to also adapt to the fast-paced news environment which we have seen of late is full of content, some of which is masked in misinformation to the point of catching even the best of us off-guard.

Should anything unfortunate happen to the big media houses and leading digital media channels, as we almost saw with KTN News on June 25, it will be those upcoming publications that will be standing, some of which will have strengthened themselves in terms of accuracy, credibility and my favourite one...creativity mixed with professionalism, one that bloggers and influencers cannot match, no matter what they do.

Imagine taking the humour of Justine Wanda and mixing it up with the professionalism and knowledge of the likes of Linus Kaikai, and Sam Gituku among others. That's your homework...tell us your results!

Allowing the leading media houses to run away with all the fame...and all the big money would force the upcoming ones to fold/shut down because of lack of funds to sustain their operations...and that clips the democratization of the media down to several sizes, hence we as the media cannot hold the government of the day, celebrity or any other newsmaker to account in a no-holds-barred way...how the Gen Z are doing it right now, and how they want the media to do it in this country...truthfully and objectively.

Marvin Chege is the founder and editor-in-chief of Viral Tea and a self-taught digital journalist and a young digital media expert with over 4 years of experience creating content with special focus on the youth: millenials and Gen Z. 

DISCLAIMER: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by this writer are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of Viral Tea.

“What's the need these days of writing and publishing news articles and sharing them on social media platforms when we know that a lot of you won't read them anyway? Kenyans have become too lazy to read news articles online.

“These days picture posts are getting more engagements than link posts.”

Comments were aplenty, from vague ones such as ‘busy looking for finances’ to informative ones such as a shift in consumer trends, however, one comment struck my attention:

“There's a guy I listened to on TikTok. He was suggesting that stories, news and information should be read out aloud to people. We're becoming lazy when it comes to reading!”

Recently, K24 published a news article detailing Tiktok sensation Azziad Nasenya's battle with suicidal thoughts, but what sparked criticism by Kenyans to the point that Azziad herself issued a clarification on Friday, December 1 saying her harrowing experience with cyberbullying and contemplating suicide occurred three years ago when her video to the “Utawezana” song by Femi One went viral was this;

Azziad Nasenya speaks on battling suicidal thoughtshttps://t.co/tstQXA8Un5 pic.twitter.com/oJpt8toGAB

— K24 TV (@K24Tv) November 30, 2023

From the article, you can see two things; a title that many think is clickbait and a recent photo collage of her.

In her video which she published on her social media handles, she said "I'm just wondering why some news outlets decided to report half the story or decide to report something that happened three or four years ago and use a current photo without highlighting the fact that you know what, this was about three years ago when that video went viral 

"But you know what, in this country, there are a lot of people who do anything for clickbait or clout, and it's just shameful...it's sad," she goes on.

Digital News vs TikTok

A long time ago, some of us (including myself) would wait for our parents to read the newspaper before we got our turn, mostly focused on youth content and stories that would interest us. Then came the digital news websites which made news consumption in real time possible.

The emergence of TikTok however through short-form videos is just enough to convince anyone that reading has become an alien culture in Kenya.

Simply put, reading online news these days, even the newspaper, does not come naturally to most of us anymore and no longer seems to be in our blood. Kenyans have become too lazy to read, and the numbers on our end confirm it.

While one might argue that K24 was wrong to publish a clickbait headline and use a recent photo of Azziad, this goes to show how news outlets are always coming up with ways to drive traffic to their digital platforms, and since they know Kenyans don't read, they used what I would call a 'viral' headline to make them read.

Traffic translates to revenue...money in simple terms. So when Kenyans don't read our news content, they are denying us an opportunity to earn money, so digital news outlets have to devise ways to keep you coming, and coming back every day.

As stated earlier, picture and video posts are getting more engagement on social media than links to news articles. Kenyans have turned to the easy way of content consumption, even though it is considered one of the most expensive and demanding ways to produce, and download it compared to reading just one article, which takes up kilobytes of your mobile data.

There was a suggestion from my post to ‘TikTok’ news articles. While that may be a good idea, there’s still a huge problem, Kenyans still won’t read because you watch that clip once and a message pops up from Brayo asking ‘My guy, si we do Vasha this weekend?’...distraction.

It is quite sad that Kenyans have become too lazy to read news content when news outlets are stepping up their reporting to include educative articles…whether on their own or within news stories. One of them I read covered how a news anchor fell in love with the HR months into his new job and ended up marrying her…and went on to do an explainer on the pros and cons of office relationships.

It is even worse when the demographics show that men are reading more news content than women, even though stories about women have been on the rise recently. Maybe the question should change from Kenyans to why our beautiful Kenyan women are not reading the news we put out every hour, beating crazy deadlines.

When I started as a writer, there was a suggestion to make my articles shorter, hence my other finding that Kenyans have a super-small attention span that has made journalists in newsrooms compress articles to a few hundred words to summarize everything or break down one report into five short articles to make sure readers accommodate as much content as possible.

I sat down and thought if there would be a need for news websites in the future, especially with monetization on X and journalists sharing their news on socials which could make audiences not see the need to click on links to access information. Without a doubt, the business aspect is why many news organisations still have websites, if not curbing impersonation on social media.

As I exhaust my 700 words, I’ll state just this; it takes 1-2 minutes of your time to read a story and 10 minutes or more to watch someone rant explicit and charged words about the number of taxes the government has introduced.

About 200KBs of mobile data to read a news article and 20MBs to download a video which will unnecessarily fill up your phone’s storage.

The choice is yours.

DISCLAIMER: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by this writer are solely those of the writer and do not reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of Viral Tea.

A long time ago, headlines such as 'President Kibaki opens Thika Superhighway' or 'President Uhuru opens the second phase of SGR line' were taken with utmost seriousness by members of the public as transport issues were expected to be resolved. Nobody noticed the unusual titbits, until the 2017 general elections.

Amidst the voting exercise, a man named Martin Kimotho was captured on camera eating githeri, a mix of boiled maize and beans, from a polythene bag as he queued to cast his vote. The photo was shared on social media platforms that day and it went viral, turning him into an overnight celebrity.

Martin Kimotho captured eating githeri while queueing to vote in the 2017 general elections and a man taking a selfie with him. /FILE

The photo was then picked up by mainstream media platforms and stories were made, which enhanced Kimotho's celebrity status. For days, local TV stations and newspapers gave him extensive coverage as he was nicknamed 'Githeri Man' and eventually handed a Head of State Commendation (HSC) by former President Uhuru Kenyatta.

What however shocked the public was the nature at which Kimotho was awarded, as the media was largely accused of giving airtime to Kimotho who was doing what an ordinary citizen would do, as well as his delicacy which is enjoyed by many communities across the country, despite its origins being the Central region. The coded message was that the mainstream media was controlled by – and therefore supported – Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.

The labelling of Kenya's mainstream media as 'githeri media' underscored two important issues; one, the public had lost its faith in mainstream media and two, many moved to alternative platforms for news, including social media, where the serious issues regarding the elections were discussed.

Memes At 2022 General Elections

A similar case was witnessed in the 2022 general elections where daring Kenyans followed in Kimotho's footsteps to test out various stunts of their own, ranging from 'Sina Maoni' man to 'Towel man' and one which captured a man eating a loaf of bread as he queued to vote.

There were 23.35 million internet users in Kenya in January 2022. Kenya's internet penetration rate stood at 42.0 per cent of the total population at the start of 2022, and a past report by Portland Communications, a UK-based political and public relations consultancy firm, revealed that Kenya has arguably one of the most active online communities on the continent after Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.

Significant social and political issues are discussed by Kenyans on Twitter (KOT). The platform has become a powerful source of information, a point of reference for those disillusioned with the country’s mainstream media (which is true for the Kenyan media too.) as well as a force for reprimanding bad behaviour, as was recently evidenced in the case of General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni.

Why Githeri Media?

Kenyans believed that digital media platforms specialised in what they viewed as sensational reports, but would not expect mainstream media houses to follow suit. One Kenyan for instance took fault with NTV's coverage of former President Uhuru Kenyatta driving himself in a pickup truck on Friday, October 21, despite being covered by numerous media houses.

Journalists who spoke to Viral Tea believe that Kenyans are yet to get used to the new dimension of reporting; viral news which is simply defined as networked news stories that spread online mostly through social media in a much faster and wider manner than other news stories.

"But people use githeri media phrases without knowing the history or when they don't agree with what is being reported including when they think news should just be about "serious" issues," one of them told Viral Tea.

He adds that these days, the criteria for what makes a newsworthy story include the prominence of a subject. President Ruto driving himself? The Queen's dog giving birth? Azziad Nasenya dating a famous politician's son? Those are today's news items.

This writer opines that the news atmosphere in the digital environment these days has almost no room to focus on just the serious items; that is no one will spend a minute of their time reading something normal and out of the ordinary. Kenyans are actively looking for solutions even to their everyday life problems and among the ways they can easily get it is through the media.

Another misunderstood subject is journalists affiliated with digital media platforms being labelled as 'bloggers'. How many times have you heard an honest, hard-working Digital Journalist being called a blogger by a disgruntled Kenyan?

"Digital journalism is NOT blogging. Journalism today composes of Digital (the internet) on top of other mediums that they use which includes Print (newspapers, magazines, periodicals) as well as Broadcast (TV, radio)," this writer states.

At the end of the day, journalists serve to inform their audiences and do the hard work of getting facts together and assessing what would interest the majority of Kenyans and leave the decision to the audience.

At times, journalists have missed one of the steps or been otherwise misled. And because credibility is the major currency of their profession, all journalists worth their weight in gold will always set the record straight.

Cut Above The Rest

One these days gets their news from platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp among others before the same news items are relayed across TV and radio stations.

With the popularization of social media came the rise of digital media houses complete with online publications, social media posts and videos, all shared in real-time. Viral Tea was established officially in February 2021 and within a year has given the legacy media houses, both mainstream and digital, a run for their money thanks to its timely news updates.

Viral Tea thrives under the Rule of Majority in producing news and multimedia content that is of interest to a majority of Kenyans. A majority of Kenyans online are between the ages of 20 and 40 years and use platforms such as Facebook and Twitter more due to the limited data bundles they have within a short period.

They have a short attention span and scroll through but pause to read what catches their eyes. Assuming that they have already read the story being written and aren't looking particularly for the same information, our work is to give them new angles.

As a purely online-based publication, we don’t have the luxury of having reporters/correspondents in the field interacting with sources and attending press conferences. We, however, do have the advantage of accessing multiple sources from one location (remotely) and evaluating the newsworthiness of the information we find.

As such, part of our news content comes from curating news from all online publishers, creating new angles that make an otherwise bland story, interesting to many Kenyans online and shareable. 

On a day like this, Saturday, October 19, 1996, I was born. I was added to the billions of people around the world, which is as of now around 8 billion.

My mother keeps describing to me how I'm still her special one, even though we're two of us (myself and my younger sister) as well as the struggles she had to endure with me, given that my father was not present at the time I was born and surface some years later.

Since then, it's been somewhat of a mixed childhood that mostly centred around being picked on a lot because in the eyes of bullies, 'I was small'.

A collage of myself as I turn 26 years old on October 19, 2022. /FACEBOOK

I've been to two high schools from my whole preparatory and primary school life at Happyland Preparatory; St Mary's School in Lavington, Nairobi and Juja Preparatory & Senior School in Kalimoni, Kiambu County. I really enjoyed the former and have to honestly say that I'm glad I came out of the latter still strong after one year and a half.

It was my campus life at the United States International University-Africa (USIU) that I enjoyed the most. Four years of quality education coupled with meeting some of the most gorgeous women on any campus (not that I dated any of them) as well as great personalities and specially-executed events made my experience one I just cannot forget.

I have a Bachelors' degree in Psychology but what those at USIU might tell you is that I have a penchant for writing which I can now admit is a natural talent that 'just happened'. Little did I know that it was going to lead to something bigger.

'Baptism Of Fire' In Digital Journalism

A friend of mine at the campus had informed me of an opportunity for writers at Kenyans.co.ke, a digital media house. I had only sought an internship and submitted my application, expressing a mix of emotions between hope and fear that I might be rejected like anyone else...only to be informed that my 'shooting my shot' went through.

At Kenyans.co.ke, the vibe was right; the journalists were great, and the editorial lead is still my good friend. The only downside was the crazy pressure, which I shall one day explain in detail in a book (and I won't hide). Some of the journalists I worked with have since moved on to other opportunities.

Leaving Kenyans after nearly two months was hard. The months after that were harder; just how was a then-24-year-old meant to move on to a bigger opportunity than the one that gave me the skills to advance to the next stage of my career; possibly my biggest one?

Anywho, after working with upcoming news websites and waiting for media jobs that never came, I decided to get out of my comfort zone and try a risky move I had planned for after years of tasting the Kenyan media industry. In the midst of fighting one of my toughest battles and living in the proper 'ghetto' residential area, I started Viral Tea (www.viraltea.co.ke)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Viral Tea Ke (@viralteakegram)

The baby within its first year of commencement in February 2021 grew rapidly into a real force in the digital media industry, and it's even more special because I'm running it all by myself as of now.

How do you tell someone that a). You're a CEO & founder in your early 20s and b). You've grown the website to over 1 million pageviews and visitors in its first year?

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A post shared by Viral Tea Ke (@viralteakegram)

I defied critics, naysayers, and even my own father who at one point was discrediting what I was trying to achieve in my career because I don't have a journalism degree, as he was still with the belief that without a journalism educational background, Kenyan media houses (even mainstream) were not considering my subsequent applications because "I don't know about journalism".

I ignored them and single-handedly grew the digital media house to what you see today and which is still growing stronger every single day (bring PARTNERSHIP MONIES, I'm READY!)

I had partners whom I worked well with for almost the entire year until we parted ways because the chemistry in my view "was not adding up and smelt of real danger". I shall still explain this in my book but this is a risk I took with consequences because "if you don't take risks, you don't grow".

Though the growth process has been a bit slow in recent months, the drive has never stopped. The August 9, 2022, general elections were arguably Viral Tea's finest time to reinforce itself as a next-generation startup, and it remains to date the most demanding time of my two-and-a-half-year journalism career.