AI Everything Kenya 2026: The Unofficial Attendee Playbook

On May 19-21, 2026, Nairobi is about to experience the biggest tech event Kenya has ever hosted. AI Everything Kenya × GITEX Kenya — three days, two venues, 15,000+ attendees, 500+ exhibitors, 75+ countries. It is the Nairobi debut of GITEX, the same global tech franchise that draws 180,000 people to Dubai every year. The Kenyan Office of the Special Envoy on Technology is backing it. Major African AI policy conversations will happen here. So will deals, partnerships, and a lot of people standing awkwardly near coffee stations trying to figure out who they should be talking to.

This is a guide for the last part.

Disclosure upfront: This is an independent guide written by the team at Cardtag. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a partner of AI Everything Kenya, GITEX, KAOUN International, Dubai World Trade Centre, or the Kenyan Office of the Special Envoy on Technology. We are a Kenyan team that builds networking tools, we are attending the event ourselves, and we wrote the guide we wish we had at our first big conference.

What actually happens over the three days

Most attendees show up on Day 1 with a ticket and a vague plan. Here is what you are walking into.

Day 1 — Tuesday, May 19: The Summit

Venue: The Sarit Expo Centre, Westlands

Format: Keynotes, panels, policy forums — themed around "Africa Driving Inclusivity in the Global AI Race"

This is the more formal day. Government officials, enterprise leaders, international AI policy voices. If you are attending for strategic context — where Africa is going on AI policy, how the $2.4 billion GDP contribution target gets hit by 2030, what the Kenyan Tech Envoy's office is actually doing — this is the day. Expect longer-form talks, structured panels, and the kind of audience that sits still and takes notes.

Day 2-3 — Wednesday & Thursday, May 20-21: The Expo

Venue: Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), Nairobi CBD

Format: Exhibition floor, startup showcase, co-located events

This is where the real action happens. 500+ exhibitors across AI, cloud, cybersecurity, agritech, fintech, healthtech, greentech. Co-located events including **North Star Kenya** (startups and scaleups), **GISEC Kenya** (cybersecurity), and **Agritech & Food Security**. This is the networking day. This is where you walk 15,000 steps, collect 40 business cards, forget 35 of the names by Thursday, and wonder what you actually got out of it.

We will come back to that problem at the end of this post.

A thing that surprises first-timers

The venues are different. Day 1 is at Sarit (in Westlands). Day 2-3 are at KICC (in the CBD). Those are about 8 km apart. If you are planning to swing between venues, do not. Pick your days and commit. Nairobi traffic during an event of this scale will absolutely eat your schedule alive.

Who is actually going to be there

The promotional material says "tech executives, governments, investors, startups, buyers." That is accurate but useless when you are standing in a crowded hall trying to decide who to approach. Here is a more honest breakdown based on how GITEX events typically distribute attendance in similar markets.

The decision-makers (~15% of the crowd) — C-level execs from African banks, telcos, insurance companies. Government ministry leads from Kenya and neighboring countries. Heads of innovation at corporates. International enterprise buyers scouting African partnerships. These people are time-boxed, in scheduled meetings, at specific booths, or in VIP areas. You are unlikely to randomly bump into them. If you want to meet them, you need to know they are coming and have a reason for them to want to meet you.

The builders (~30% of the crowd) — Founders of African AI startups. Engineers and product people at tech companies. Freelance developers and consultants. University AI researchers. This is the crowd that is most approachable and arguably most valuable for most attendees. They will be wandering the expo floor, sitting through talks, standing in coffee queues. They are also the crowd most likely to become long-term collaborators.

The investors and dealmakers (~10% of the crowd) — VCs from Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia. Development finance institutions. Angel syndicate leads. Corporate venture arms. Many of these people are at GITEX events specifically to fill their deal pipeline. They are often more approachable than founders expect, because they *want* to find you before their competitors do. But they are also good at disappearing into private meetings if you do not connect early.

The just-here-for-the-vibe crowd (~25%) — Students and recent grads. Curious professionals from adjacent industries. International visitors combining the event with Nairobi tourism. People whose employer bought them a ticket. Nothing wrong with this crowd. Most of us started here. But if you are time-constrained, these are not the people who move your goals forward.

The suppliers and vendors (~20%) — Exhibitors selling tools, services, infrastructure. Sales reps and business development folks. Agency representatives. Event sponsors and partners. These people *want* to talk to you. Their job depends on it. If you are a buyer, this is great. If you are not, learn to be polite and move on.

The honest implication: Of 15,000 people, maybe 5,000-6,000 are directly relevant to whatever you are trying to accomplish. And within that, maybe 100-200 are *specifically* the people you should be meeting. Finding those 100-200 is the entire game.

The five mistakes first-time GITEX attendees make

I have watched people burn out at conferences like this for years. Here are the patterns.

Mistake 1: Not knowing why you are there

"Networking" is not a goal. "Learning about AI" is not a goal. Both are too vague to make decisions with.

Real goals look like: "I want to meet 3 agritech founders who have deployed AI models in East Africa." Or: "I want to find 2 enterprise decision-makers at banks who are piloting AI tools." Or: "I want to raise a seed round and need introductions to 5 Africa-focused VCs."

Write your goal on a note in your phone. Refer to it every time you are about to walk into a session or start a conversation. If what you are doing is not helping that goal, do something else.

Mistake 2: Over-optimizing the agenda

First-timers download the full schedule and try to attend 18 sessions across 3 days. They end up exhausted, barely talking to anyone, and remembering almost nothing.

Attend 4-5 sessions maximum across the full event. Pick the ones where the topic is directly relevant to your goal AND the speaker or panel is someone you would actually pay to meet 1-on-1. Everything else is distraction. The expo floor and hallways are where the actual value is.

Mistake 3: Collecting business cards like Pokémon

You will leave with 40 cards. You will remember 5 conversations. You will follow up with 2. The other 38 cards will sit on your desk for 3 months, then get thrown away.

This is not a personal failing — it is the default behavior of human memory under conference conditions. Your brain is dealing with noise, new faces, and decision fatigue. By day 3, every new person blurs into every other new person.

The fix is not "try harder to remember." The fix is to capture context at the moment of the conversation.

Mistake 4: Talking to the wrong people first

Early in day 1, you are fresh, confident, open to anyone. By end of day 2, you are tired and selective. Most people spend their best energy on the first person they bump into — which is usually someone standing by the entrance, who is also killing time.

Start conversations with intention. Walk the floor for 30 minutes before talking to anyone. Scout. Then go back to the 3-4 people or booths that actually matched what you came for.

Mistake 5: Not having a follow-up system

This is the one I want to spend the rest of this post on, because it is the one nobody fixes, and it is the one that costs the most.

The 94% problem

The pattern is consistent across every study on professional events: within one week of a networking event, the vast majority of new contacts are effectively forgotten. Not just that you lost their card — they do not remember you either. The connection decays.

By day 14, most of your new contacts cannot picture your face when they hear your name.

This is not because people are rude or lazy. It is because human working memory was not designed for the load of meeting 40 strangers in 72 hours while trying to absorb panel content, find the bathroom, and respond to Slack messages from the office you still work at. The biology is against you.

There are roughly three ways people try to solve this.

The paper approach. Take notes on the back of each card as you get it. This actually works for people with monk-like discipline. For everyone else, by hour 4 of day 1 you are writing "sales guy, cool vibes" on the back of every card and it all blurs together.

The LinkedIn blitz. Connect with everyone on LinkedIn as you meet them. This is the modern default. It technically captures the contact, but it strips all the context. Six months later you will see a name in your connections list and have zero memory of how you know them.

The spreadsheet. You type contacts into a Google Sheet at the end of each day with notes. In theory perfect, in practice nobody actually does this for more than 2 days.

The thing that actually works: capturing the context of the conversation at the moment it happens. Not just the name — what they are working on, what you discussed, what you promised to follow up on, who they know, why they matter to you. Captured in the 30 seconds after the conversation ends, while the memory is still vivid.

This is hard to do manually. You cannot type on your phone while shaking hands with the next person. You cannot remember the details if you wait until the end of the day. And paper gets lost.

What we are doing about it (and how you can use it for free)

I am not going to pretend this is a neutral guide — I run a company called Cardtag and we have built exactly this tool. It is what I use at events, and it is what I am going to use at AI Everything Kenya × GITEX Kenya. So it feels honest to tell you how it works and let you decide if it is useful.

Cardtag is a free networking tool built specifically for events like this. You join from your phone browser — no app download. You see a live lobby of other attendees who have also joined. You can browse by role, company, industry, or what they are working on. You send connection requests during the event. Our AI captures the context of every connection you make. After the event, you get a personalized recap of who you met and who you should follow up with, plus AI-drafted follow-up messages.

It works best when lots of attendees are using it together, which is why we are doing something specific for this event.

A free, independent networking arena for AI Week attendees

We are hosting an independent, free Cardtag arena for anyone attending AI Everything Kenya × GITEX Kenya. Not an official partnership. Not endorsed by the summit. Just a free community tool for attendees who want a better way to find and remember each other.

How it works:

1. You are attending the event

2. Before or during, you visit cardtag.io/score to take our free 2-minute networking assessment (this also gives you your networking personality type, which is useful)

3. You will get an invite to join the AI Week arena closer to the event date

4. During the event, you can see other attendees who have joined, browse who is there, send connection requests live

5. After the event, Cardtag's AI generates your personalized recap and follow-up suggestions

What it costs: Nothing. Zero. The arena is free for anyone attending. We will eventually charge for Pro features, but everything you need for this event is on the free tier.

Why we are doing this: Honestly, two reasons. First, we built Cardtag for exactly this problem and we think it will be genuinely useful for people at a 15,000-person event. Second, if it works well here, we will have a case study and word-of-mouth that helps us grow. We are being transparent about both.

What we are NOT doing: We are not scraping the official attendee list. We do not have access to it. We do not want it. The arena only includes people who opt in themselves. It is purely a community tool, not a data grab.

Your pre-event checklist

Whether you use Cardtag or not, here is what you should do in the weeks before the event to get ready.

4-5 weeks out (now): Write your goal for the event. One sentence. Specific. Register if you have not already at aieverythingkenya.com. Start a running list of people you would like to meet at this event — look at the agenda, the exhibitor list, speaker bios. Target 20-30 names. Decide which days you are attending (summit only, expo only, or full 3 days) and plan your logistics accordingly.

2-3 weeks out: Research your top 10 targets. What are they working on right now? What would be a useful thing for you to bring them? Draft a 15-second intro for yourself — who you are, what you do, what you are looking for. Practice it until you do not stumble. Book accommodation if you are coming from outside Nairobi — CBD hotels book out fast during KICC events. Take the Cardtag networking assessment at cardtag.io/score to understand your networking type before the event.

1 week out: Download the official AI Everything Kenya app if they have one. Join the Cardtag AI Week arena (link in your scorecard results email, or on cardtag.io closer to the date). Bring two phone chargers — KICC WiFi and power outlets will be a war zone. Wear comfortable shoes. Seriously. KICC is huge and you are going to walk all day.

Day of: Arrive 30 minutes before your first priority session. Queue management at major events is always worse than promised. Check the arena as soon as you are inside to see who else has joined. Have your 15-second intro ready. Bring business cards anyway — some people still prefer them, do not be the person who shows up with nothing.

The honest closing

I am writing this 5 weeks before the event because I genuinely want attendees to have a better experience than most first-timers get at events this big. The default outcome is: you go, you are tired, you collect cards, you forget, you go home with a vague sense that it was worth it but you cannot point to specific wins.

That is the default. And it is fixable — with a plan, some clarity about what you are there for, and tools that handle the parts your brain cannot.

If you want to join the free Cardtag arena for AI Everything Kenya × GITEX Kenya, you can take the 2-minute networking assessment at cardtag.io/score and you will get the arena invite when it goes live closer to the event.

If you do not want to use Cardtag — totally fine. The rest of this guide still holds. Use it with whatever tools work for you.

Either way: write your goal, plan your days, pace yourself, and do not try to meet everyone.

See you at KICC.

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*This guide is independent and not affiliated with AI Everything Kenya, GITEX Kenya, KAOUN International, Dubai World Trade Centre, or the Kenyan Office of the Special Envoy on Technology. All event details are drawn from publicly available sources and are accurate as of publication.*

cardtag.io/score — Know your networking type before you walk into KICC.