I met Pelle in Nairobi in 2013 or 14. Here's his account about Kipochi: https://blog.stakeventures.com/articles/what-actually-happened-at-kipochi Bitpesa was shut down by Safaricom in the same year IIRC, but apparently turned into an exchange later:

BitPesa | Africa's Crypto and BTC Exchange – Access the Deepest BTC Liquidity in Africa

@bumi and I were traveling around East Africa during that time frame, and he built a Telegram bot in order to pay for his own things with bitcoin and to demo how bridges could work.