Africa's real economy is talking.
IQONA turns fragmented business activity into intelligence for the people running it, and the institutions trying to see it. Where AI learns how African businesses actually work.
Three connected bodies of work.
IQONA works across three connected areas: helping businesses understand their own activity, making the real economy more visible, and researching whether AI systems actually understand the language and context behind it.
Tools for the people running businesses.
Ask IQONA, Ledger, Coach and Circles turn everyday activity into useful business intelligence.
Visibility into the real economy.
The Hustle Economy Barometer, Business Finder, IQONA Score and institutional intelligence turn aggregated signals into a clearer view of markets.
Does AI understand Africa's real economy?
IQONA Research and Foundry evaluate pragmatic meaning, multilingual business language, local context, reasoning and explainability.
Start with the people doing the work.
A market stall, a driver, a salon, a shop, a farmer, a freelancer. They already generate business data every day through payments, orders, stock decisions, conversations and questions. IQONA starts there.
Mama Mboga
Driver
Salon
Small Shop
Intelligence that meets businesses where they are.
From a market stall to an online business, school, SACCO or growing enterprise, IQONA works through familiar channels including WhatsApp, voice and text.
Ask IQONA
Understands English, Swahili, Sheng and expanding local language coverage including Kikuyu, Kamba and Luo. Answers questions about sales, cash flow, stock, pricing and performance.
IQONA Ledger
A continuously built business record from M Pesa transactions, WhatsApp orders, voice notes and other activity the business already generates.
IQONA Coach
Personalized insights tied to a business's own numbers why sales changed, where margins may be shrinking and what needs attention.
IQONA Circles
Shared intelligence for SACCOs, associations, schools and organizations managing or supporting multiple businesses or accounts.
IQONA Studio
Configure questions, nudges, flows and Circle triggers without requiring a custom engineering build.
Work how people already work
WhatsApp · Voice notes · Text · English · Swahili · Sheng · Kikuyu · Kamba · Luo, with coverage expanding over time.
The Hustle Economy Barometer.
A regularly published view of business activity across regions and sectors tracking sales, cash flow, confidence, pricing and business conditions over time.
Public insights make the economy easier to understand, while deeper analysis can support institutions making decisions around the businesses and markets they serve.
Does AI understand Africa's real economy?
Language coverage is not enough. IQONA Research studies whether AI systems understand pragmatic meaning, code switching, local business context and the decisions people are actually trying to make. IQONA Foundry turns that work into benchmarks, evaluation datasets and research infrastructure.
Kenyan SME Pragmatic Understanding Benchmark
Evaluate literal understanding, pragmatic meaning and decision quality in realistic, code switched SME language.
Multilingual & code switching
Study performance across English, Swahili, Sheng and local languages as coverage expands.
Explainability & grounding
Measure whether answers are traceable to evidence, context aware and useful rather than merely fluent.
Model evaluations
Compare model behavior across business tasks and publish reproducible findings rather than relying on marketing claims.
Evaluation datasets
Build consented and carefully designed datasets reflecting business language and contexts generic benchmarks often miss.
Reports & research
Publish benchmark releases, methods, findings, data notes and collaborations as IQONA's research program grows.
From individual signals to ecosystem intelligence.
IQONA turns consented business activity into privacy preserving intelligence for institutions, researchers and AI builders without losing sight of the businesses that generated it.
Business Finder
Natural-language, location-aware discovery that makes smaller and less visible businesses easier to find.
IQONA Score
A developing trust and financial signal built from consented transaction and repayment behavior.
Institutional Intelligence
County and sector-level dashboards and analysis for governments, development institutions and NGOs.
API & Licensing
Aggregated, privacy preserving datasets and intelligence for fintechs, insurers, researchers and AI builders.
IQONA Foundry
Evaluation datasets and tooling for AI systems operating in African business contexts.
Barometer
A recurring public lens into what businesses are experiencing across markets, sectors and regions.
Built from the ground up. Literally.
Africa's real economy runs on people, trust, language and relationships. Valuable business data remains fragmented across transactions, conversations and daily activity. IQONA turns those signals into intelligence without asking businesses to abandon how they already work.
Start with individual businesses. Expand through groups. Scale through institutions.
Individual Business
Ask IQONA, Ledger and personalized business intelligence.
Groups & Networks
Shared intelligence for SACCOs, associations, schools and business networks.
Institutional
Custom intelligence, analytics, datasets, research and API access.