Victor Onyango

Research Associate @PASGR_ | M. A. in Development Studies, @IDS_UONBI |@MoiUniKenya Alumni | #EIDM @AfricaAEYL |Environmentalist | #SDGs |Afro-optimist

[Aadit Sheth @aaditsh]

Wait. Google is paying SpaceX $920 million per month for GPUs?

Google. The company that builds its own TPUs. That runs one of the largest cloud infrastructures on earth. Is renting 110,000 Nvidia GPUs from a rocket company.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. Either Google's AI compute needs have gotten so massive that even they can't build fast enough. Or SpaceX has built something in AI infrastructure that nobody was paying attention to. Or both.

$920M a month. $30B over the contract.

Whatever is happening behind the scenes at these companies is moving way faster than what we see publicly.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

Never bet against Elon.

Everyone is reading this as a cloud deal. It is not a cloud deal. It is a regime change.

SpaceX is now selling compute to Google. Read that again. The launch company, the satellite company, is the one getting paid almost a billion dollars a month for access to 110,000 GPUs. North of 30 billion across the contract. Google is the customer here, not the landlord.

This is what vertical integration of an entire civilization looks like. Energy, launch, orbital infrastructure, satellites, compute, and xAI sitting on top of all of it. Elon is not building a company, he is building the substrate.

SpaceX x xAI is quietly assembling the full stack that takes humanity to Kardashev Type I. Energy to orbit, compute everywhere, intelligence on top. Nobody else on the planet is even playing this game.

Meanwhile 99% of the S&P 500 is still optimizing slide decks, running committees, and managing quarterly narratives. Pure corporate cosplay. They are antifragile to nothing and exposed to everything. They are the past wearing a blue chip costume.

The Nasdaq is about to get a brutal lesson in power laws. A handful of names will capture almost all of the upside, and the rest will be revealed for what they are. Elon is going to redefine what the index even means.

Elon will eat everything.

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

What is unfolding in Senegal between President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Ousmane Sonko is a reminder that democratic transitions do not end at elections. The real test is in managing succession, and balancing competing centers of legitimacy.

[Larry Madowo @LarryMadowo]

Senegalese President Faye fires Sonko, Sonko outsmarts him and becomes Speaker of Parliament with absolute majority.

Faye would not be president without Sonko. Is his presidency cooked?

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

The real battle ahead of the 2027 elections is not simply tutam versus wantam. It is leadership versus the economy.

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

@makaumutua Apples and oranges

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

Quite the pivot. Guess Xi is really the one in charge.

[Al Jazeera Breaking News @AJENews]

BREAKING: US President Donald Trump on Friday warned Taiwan against pushing for formal independence, after he discussed the flashpoint issue with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing.

🔴 More on https://t.co/hGzrK2N8WC

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

@otienowill It is hard small

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

The disconnect between this administration's priorities and ordinary Kenyans’ struggles is on another level.

[Moe @moneyacademyKE]

This is the first time in Kenya’s history diesel has gone up by Sh46 to Sh243 in a single fuel pricing cycle after an EPRA review.

When diesel goes up like that:
— Cost of living goes up
— Logistics costs go up

(Yet salaries remain the same)

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

@FabrizioNgumoha 2005

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

Unfortunately, research in Kenya often stays in journals, while policymaking runs on politics.

[Celestino @_celestino127]

China is downloading more research from Kenyan universities than Kenya itself is using. Meanwhile, barely a single policy in Parliament is grounded in local research.

That’s not just ironic - it’s embarrassing.

If knowledge isn’t shaping our laws, what exactly is?

[Jerome Chisikwa @JeromeChisikwa]

No foreign companies are allowed to extract minerals in America, China, or Europe, but in Africa African countries rely on foreign companies to extract their own minerals. Don’t we have engineering companies with African engineers in Africa? This trend must end!

[Toby @TomolaGroup]

World Bank told Nigeria to reopen fuel imports because Dangote’s fuel was 12% more expensive than imports. Dangote called it flawed. World Bank quietly deleted the whole report from their website.

Meanwhile Europe is buying refined fuel from the same Dangote refinery because Middle East supply got disrupted. The same Europe that used to sell Nigeria its own crude back as petrol. You can’t make this up.

An African refinery finally works at scale and the first recommendation is not invest more, not expand capacity. It’s bring back imports.

When Africa consumes nobody says a word. When Africa refines and competes suddenly it’s a problem.

[Nelson Amenya @amenya_nelson]

You know why Ethiopia is moving mad? The same investors always come to Kenya first but the extortion is on another level they opt to do it elsewhere. I have met billionaires who tell me they are tired of being forced to bribe leaders and the amounts keep rising.

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Huh? Israel isn't alone because Netanyahu hoodwinked Trump to join this war-of-choice, a crime of aggression, against Iran. If Trump ultimately abandons Israel, as he should, it will be Israel's own doing. The people who are really alone are the Palestinians, victims of genocide.

[#LandIsNotProperty Mwalimu Wandia @wmnjoya]

This was done to Kenya as multi-partism was being introduced. The west found a way to evacuate thinking from Kenyan society without having to use assassinations, detention and exile like it did during the Moi and Jomo eras. Now it just infiltrated the universities with the evil idea of "market driven programs" and "solutions." It told Kenyans that there's no use of knowledge if it doesn't directly solve problems, and the place to solve problems is in NGOs.

Then Kenyans who should have known better gave up their right to think. They stopped studying philosophy and political science started studying human rights, they stopped studying history and started studying peace reconciliation. They stopped studying arts and started studying arts for development. An intellectual blood bath took place in Kenya 30 years ago, and to this day, Kenyans are not aware. The disease was instead spread to the primary schools under the name of "competence."

We went through this history on #MaishaKazini with @m_ogada

https://t.co/bW1B2hSRHn

[Victor Onyango @VOnyango_]

@Ademba_47 What is clear is who we are not voting for.

[Charlie Sykes @SykesCharlie]

Making old tweets great again.

[Charles Onyango-Obbo @cobbo3]

Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria Early African Winners as They Harvest Windfall from the Misery of US–Israel vs Iran War
As the world reels from the escalation of the US–Israel vs Iran war that erupted on 28 February, the humanitarian suffering is profound. Yet in the realm of global commerce, a quieter upheaval is underway. With the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz rendered near impassable – shipping traffic down by 90% – Africa has emerged as the world’s most vital logistics corridor.
•In KENYA, the once-forgotten LAMU PORT has roared to life. Long dismissed by critics as a white elephant, it has seen a 974% surge in volume. Ultra-large vessels, too deep for Mombasa and too exposed for Gulf waters, now dock at Lamu’s 18-metre natural depth.
•ETHIOPIA'S national carrier Ethiopian Airlines has seized the moment. With Dubai and Doha mostly paralysed by airspace risks from Iranian missile and droke strikes, Addis Ababa has become the continent’s primary air-bridge. Cargo revenue is up 14%. High-value goods – electronics, pharmaceuticals, perishables –are now routed through Bole International, bypassing the 40-day sea detour.
•NIGERIA is counting its crude. Brent prices hit $120 per barrel in March. Against a budget benchmark of $64.85, daily revenues have doubled. The government has stumbled into an unexpected multi-billion dollar fiscal cushion.
•DURBAN, South Africa’s main port, has shed its reputation for congestion. It is now clocking 28 crane moves per hour, processing thousands of ships rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope with a rare level of precision.
•MOROCCO'S Royal Air Maroc has moved swiftly. Ten new international routes –including Los Angeles and Beirut – have siphoned off transit passengers who once relied on Middle Eastern hubs. Casablanca traffic is up 12%.
•WALVIS BAY in Namibia has become the first reliable refuelling station for ships emerging from the South Atlantic. Bunkering demand is up 30%.
•The DANGOTE Petroleum Refinery has in Nigeria, is cashing in. In March, it issued an export tender for 84,000 metric tonnes of jet fuel and diesel. It is no longer just a domestic project – it is replacing Persian Gulf supplies for the continent.
•MOZAMBIQUE'S $20 billion LNG project has been fast-tracked. TotalEnergies resumed operations in early 2026. Over 4,000 workers are racing to meet an accelerated production date. Iranian gas is out. Mozambican gas is in.
•At Mozambique's PORT of MAPUTO, volumes grew by 16% in the weeks following the war’s outbreak. Chrome and coal exporters have abandoned northern routes in favour of the safer Indian Ocean–Cape corridor.
•MAURITIUS, ever shrewd, has leveraged its mid-ocean position into a 15% revenue increase. High-end logistics and emergency repair services are now its bread and butter.
But no doubt, the most intriguing twist is the Roll-on/Roll-off (RoRo) revolution in Lamu. Manufacturers are using RoRo ships – where vehicles are driven on and off via ramps – to offload thousands of cars. These are then ferried to the Gulf on small, low-risk boats to avoid the $200,000+ war risk insurance premiums slapped on large carriers entering the Strait of Hormuz.
To protect this windfall, Kenya and Ethiopia have launched joint military operations along the once-languishing Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor. This unprecedented coordination is designed to ensure that the new “safe harbour” of Lamu remains shielded from regional spillover.
And because the closure of the Strait of Hormuz marooned shipping containers, an emergency air-bridge has formed. Nairobi and Addis Ababa are now the primary transit points for consumer electronics flown from Asia to Europe—bypassing the the 17,700KM sea detour.
US leader Donald Trump despises Africa, once labelling its countries "sh*thole", but while many of them will be hit hard by rising energy and fertilisers from America and Israel's attack on Iran, several of them will get a bounty he would never have wished for them.