Abdihamid Hassan

Abdihamid Hassan is the founder of Arda Link AI, a venture that applies artificial intelligence to Kenya's pastoralist economy. He comes from Isiolo County, is the fifth of seven children, and graduated from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in December 2024 with a degree in Community Development and Environment.

Arda Link AI combines real-time satellite data to estimate the nutritional needs of livestock, follow herd movements and anticipate drought and pasture conditions. A defining design choice is language: the platform is meant to work in local pastoralist dialects so that herders who are usually left out of digital services can use it directly. Hassan frames the opportunity around a pastoralist sector valued at about USD 1.1 billion, which underpins livelihoods in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands and supplies roughly 90 percent of the meat eaten in the country.

In April 2026 the idea won the Red Bull Basement Kenya national final at iHub Nairobi, rising from more than 3,800 submissions to beat 14 other finalists in front of a panel of founders and industry leaders. The win came with an AMD AI laptop, USD 5,000 in Microsoft Azure credits and mentoring through a global pre-acceleration phase meant to turn the concept into a minimum viable product, along with a ticket to the Red Bull Basement World Final in San Francisco in June 2026. He used his moment on stage to urge fellow finalists to keep building regardless of results.