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Originally published by Techish Kenya
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January 28, 2026
20h ago

Safaricom’s M-Pesa Daraja 3.0 sandbox issues spur community-built local alternative

Safaricom’s M-Pesa Daraja 3.0 sandbox issues spur community-built local alternative

Safaricom unveiled Daraja 3.0 in November 2025, the latest iteration of its M-Pesa API platform. The launch was accompanied by a polished marketing campaign,..

✨ Key Highlights

Despite Safaricom's launch of M-Pesa Daraja 3.0 in November 2025, developers faced significant issues with its unstable sandbox environment, leading to the creation of a community-built, open-source alternative.

  • A developer, OmentaElvis, released Pesa Playground in December 2025 to address the shortcomings of the official Daraja 3.0 sandbox.
  • Pesa Playground offers a local-first architecture, a mini-economy simulator, and capabilities for edge case testing, running offline on a user's machine.
  • The project, built with Rust and Tauri, quickly evolved, reaching version 1.0.0 in December 2025 and receiving multiple updates by January 2026.
  • This alternative provides developers with a reliable way to test M-Pesa integrations, avoiding frustrations associated with the official sandbox's "happy path" problem and connectivity issues.

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Tech & Finance Firms Launch Cloud Region, Training, and Campaigns in Kenya - January 2026

Oracle has confirmed that iXAfrica Data Centres in Nairobi will host its first public cloud region in East Africa, fulfilling a previous announcement by President William Ruto. In another initiative, Huawei launched its ICT Competition 2025/2026 Bootcamp Training in Kenya, selecting 21 students from nearly 3,000 applicants to equip them with advanced digital skills. During Data Privacy Week, Binance launched a "Safety Campaign" in Nairobi to connect road safety practices with digital asset protection. Also during the week, Absa Bank Kenya's Chief Data Officer, Hartnell Ndungi, emphasized the critical importance of data privacy. Separately, developers faced significant issues with the sandbox for Safaricom's M-Pesa Daraja 3.0, leading them to create a community-built open-source alternative.

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