Kenyan Orphaned Youth Shines in California USA Despite Declining Harvard University scholarship and Launched Web Hosting Company Worth 10M

Mubarak Muyika was named one of Forbes Africa’s 30 under 30, and he was the youngest on Business Insider’s list of the world’s top young entrepreneurs.

He declined a Harvard University scholarship to pursue his dream of becoming an entrepreneur. He created Hypecentury Technologies, a web hosting firm when he was 16 years old.

Muyika is a Kenyan hailing from Western Kenya. Mubarak’s father was a senior civil official who died when Mubarak was two years old, and his mother was a high school teacher who died when he was eleven. Muyika was nurtured in the Nairobi suburbs by his mother’s sister and her husband.

He earned first place in the 48th edition of the show for a technical whitepaper titled ‘Kahunic infra-photo surveyor,’ which was presented as a computer presentation.

Muyika’s whitepaper used reflection and refraction to locate items hidden behind concrete and wood, among other purposes, using Java, MySQL, and C++ dependencies, infrared and laser beams, and bespoke ray emitters.
Muyika was honoured at the Kenya Students Congress on Science and Technology with a national prize.

Muyika won for a database he created to regulate the flow of gasoline and the movement of oil tankers in the fair’s 49th edition the following year. The idea was originally known as ‘Techno Fibre System’ during the show, but it was also known as ‘Enhanced Petrol Tracker.’ It was displayed as a computer exhibit in the ICT category, and despite Muyika being named the top student in the category, the project came in third place nationally. The African Leadership Academy awarded him the Anzisha Prize for Young Entrepreneurs the following year for his efforts with HypeCentury.

In a six-figure deal, Muyika sold HypeCentury to Wemps Telecoms. Hypecentury had 14 employees at the time of the sale and was managing over 700 companies and 1400 domains. Wemps Telecoms has since rebranded HypeCentury as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Muyika later created Zagace in Nairobi with funds raised from investors and earnings from the sale of HypeCentury. Since then, Zagace has received several angel investments from a variety of sources.