WordCamp Nairobi 2025: How it All Went Down – My Perspectives

WordCamp Nairobi 2025 is the 9th edition of the WordPress-focused conference, which takes place within the heart of Nairobi, the Capital City of Kenya, every year. This year, it happened at DayStar University from 7th to 8th November 2025. As a passionate user and lover of #WordPress, I and Miklah Life could not miss.

In this brief post, I will share with you my experience of the camp and a few of the sessions that I managed to catch up with. I have tried to add links for everything and everyone I talk about so you easily connect, except where I did not find the information to share.

I will also give a glimpse into other adventures that i took on while in the beautiful city of Nairobi. Important to note is that, this was not my first time in Nairobi; I have visted this city many more other times, mostly for UNEP sustainability processes. However, this time, it was for tech reasons; yes, for #WordPress. Wait! Do you wanna get started with WordPress? We have the best offer in the world!

My Journey to Nairobi for WordCamp Nairobi

To be safe from any random interruptions, I boarded the bus to Nairobi as early as on 5th November 2025, and I was in NAIROBI by 5:00am, Thursday 6th November 2025. The conference was to happen the next day. Being this early, I had a lot of time on my hands to roam around the city and also prepare for the day.

Well, as soon as the bus dropped me in the town, Nairobi CBD as most like to call it, I immediately requested for Wifi Password from the office, BusCar booking office. I then opened by Bolt app, and booked for a ride. The driver came on time, clean small car. The fee? Just 300KSH (from downtown to Gigiri – UNEP).

As soon as I settled in, my friend (Muindi) and I planned to walk around, see and experience a few stuff. We visted some places, did, and ate some stuff!

We visited village market. We visted Ruaka, an interesting suburb. We went to Gachie, and took some awesome juice. We went to Two rivers, one of the biggest shopping malls in the whole of East and Central Africa, shoped for cotton candy, got my safaricom line, and of course had to ride the ferris wheel, also known as the eye of Kenya, maybe because you are able to view far and everywhere once on top! Wait, about the ferris wheel, you really should try it the next time you are in Nairobi.

On the same day, I even finalized my WordCamp presentation (In part 2 or day 2, I will share more about my presentation and provide the download), and submitted it to the organizers. We wrapped up the day with a nice meal and sleep!

WordCamp Nairobi 2025: First Day, my second day in Nairobi

As hustlers, my Kenyan friend, Muindi, and I decided that experiencing the city would be more authentic and fun if we used public transport rather than unnecessarily ordering Uber or Bolt rides.

I began my day with a Nairobi bus ride from Gigiri (UNEP) down to the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD). I got off near the Nairobi National Archives/Tom Mboya Statue or monument and walked across town to the upper section, often called Upper Hill. There, I boarded another bus heading to DayStar University, specifically getting off at the Total Hurlingham stage.

Daystar University is just a few metres from the Total station. My friend, Muindi, had come with me. We simply walked over to the university, passed through the security checks, and were directed to the building where the event was taking place. The reception was excellent. My name was checked, I was given my speaker tag, and offered the camp T-shirt, which I immediately changed into at the nearby men’s restroom. The day had just begun.

The director of the day, Patrick Lumumba, opened the event by welcoming us all to Nairobi and the camp. He also jokingly threatened that no one would access food or breakfast without wearing the camp T-shirt. Anyway, we all had the T-shirt, and I’m sure he was only bluffing! I stayed for every session, from the first to the last.

The First Session: Optimizing for AI: GEO strategies for WordPress Visibility

Jesse Mwangi introduced his topic by acknowledging how much we’ve already invested in SEO and other tricks to rank highly with Google or other search engines. He emphasized that with the ongoing AI revolution and the rise of AI Overviews in search results, our previous methods won’t be as effective. If we want our websites or businesses to be recognized or referenced by AI in its outputs, we have to elevate our game and perfect Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

I’m not a techie, so I can’t elaborate on everything he said. However, I understood his core advice: we need to refine our website schemas, intentionally build our products or content around our regional or local contexts, and establish multiple points of trust. This includes consistency in contact information across all platforms, having local business addresses, enhancing customer experience and reviews, and deliberately sharing great content packed with real-life scenarios and experiences.

We all hoped that by doing this, AI would deem us valuable to its users and prominently feature our businesses.

The Second Session: Building Seamless Payment Systems for Africa

Hazary Otieno from Paynecta Kenya explored the difficulties Africans have faced in making and receiving online payments. Even after the great innovation of mobile money payments, most Western e-commerce tools still haven’t provided easy integration.

He specifically noted how WooCommerce, despite existing for years and knowing that PayPal and other gateways are poorly supported in Africa, provides no mobile money integration out-of-the-box. One has to use a third-party payment gateway, like Pesapal, to integrate mobile money. Lastly, most payment gateways hold our money for a day or more, making it difficult for businesses to execute operations promptly.

In a bold move, Otieno discussed possible remedies and surprisingly shared a solution he and his team were developing. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Paynecta, a unique payment gateway that simply allows your clients to instantly pay directly into your bank account from their M-Pesa, no holding your money, even for a second! I tried convincing him and his team of shipping the solution to Uganda, for which they promised they will explore!

The Third Session: Blogging – Pros and Cons

This session was presented by James Nyabola, the blogger at the Kenya Governance Magazine. James simply emphasized that blogging is still relevant and impactful. He explored the pros and cons, noting that a key challenge is blogging about strong opinions, for example, on politics or culture.

However, he asserted that it’s worth it. Every person should feel comfortable having opinions and causes to sacrifice for. Additionally, blogging can generate income, connect us to others in our field, and serve as a motivator for greater ideas.

By way, have your subscribed to this blog already? Yes, this is #MiklahBlog, and our writings are inspiring and life-changing, cutting across work, faith, and relationships. See more and join our 4k+ mailing list here

The Fourth Session: Decoding behavior – Users, Bots, and Attack Signatures for Stronger Security

This session focused on website security. According to the presenter, Lee Ndegwa, WordPress is inherently a safe platform. However, our carelessness can lead to security issues. He shared some of the signs that indicate a website has been hacked, including slowness, redirects to other unusual sites, and many others.

While there are many ways to prevent attacks, his emphasis was on: What do you do once you’ve already been attacked?

He shared a trick he called The Nuclear Option, which involves deleting everything on your WordPress site except three folders or files: the child theme, the wp-config.php file, and the uploads folder. His argument was that everything else can be replaced but not these three files. He added that we must ensure the uploads folder cannot execute any code, which can be restricted with a script.

Do you see how you could accomplish the above? Just ask your favorite AI; it’s easier than you think!

Did you get all that? Don’t worry! I too didn’t get everything! But here’s the take-home message: take care of your website’s security, for everything else depends on it. Specifically, guard your database with your heart. In my view, for less tech-savvy WordPress users, it’s best to rely on the best hosting service providers who manage security for you and utilize some of the top security plugins and suggestions available in the WordPress community. You’ll be fine!

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Lunch time

Food was delicious, enough, and indeed Kenyan. I have no food or lunch photos yet, except one I grabbed from our WhatsApp group. See for yourself:

After about 40-60 minutes, we entered the room for the afternoon sessions, and can you guess what happened? The projector malfunctioned, and we wasted more than 30 minutes trying to figure it out. And we did not! Isn’t interesting that tech guys and tech conferences can suffer tech glitches? If it can happen with us, then who is immune?

Fast forward, the programs manager considered presentations that required no slideshow or projector and asked them to jump in. We moved on.

The fifth session: Tech Women Up

Cerinah N. Kasirye of Trillion Looks Store came in with an exciting topic regarding women empowerment and inclusion in Tech. She introduced her session with teasing and thought-provoking gender-focused questions on women empowerment and drove her point home in the most astonishing way.

According to Cerinah, women need to be empowered to take on technology just like anybody else. Importantly, she insisted, empowering women is not for their own good, but also for ourselves. As such, she called on us all, let us empower the women in our lives.

The sixth session: When your code becomes your boss and why developers need a collective voice

Frida Mwangi is a leader in the gigs economy in Kenya and she is co-leading efforts to streamline challenges of gig workers and other related digital entrepreneurs through what they called Kenya Union of Gig Workers. According to Frida, the digital space is evolving so fast that no law-maker will ever catch up. Accordingly, she says, there will always be issues affecting people in a certain digital arena. These issues need to be addressed not by an individual but a group of people in that gig arena.

According to her, nobody should find comfort in being alone; forming communities around the digital technologies we use gives a collective voice to defend and develop us in times of exploitations from government or any other entities.

What digital arena are you in? Content creators? Web designers? Photography? Whatever it is, come together and confront it together. Chances are you will succeed well with others, not by yourself alone! Have you joined any WordPress community yet? Wait! If your life is even much more than just WordPress, then join Miklah Life WhatsApp Group.

WordCamp Nairobi 2025: The end of the first day

The first day of WordCamp Nairobi 2025 ended with a bang, at just 4:30pm. It was amazing and timely. We took group and individual photos, made a friend or two, and we all left for our accomodations. I left with about three more colleagues, and we both took a bus to Nairobi CBD. It was awesome.

Well, in Nairobi CBD, public transport was at a standstill that evening. I saw thousands of ‘Nairobians’ stranded, and I gave up on myself. I could not make it home in a public bus or matatu anymore!

I used Bolt, booked a bodaboda ride, and I was home (Gigiri) by about 7:20pm. The bodaboda ride was breath-taking and ‘life-threatening’. That was my first day at WordCamp Nairobi 2025. In the next article, I will discuss day 2 at the camp. For now, chao-chao, and have a good life.