When we first integrated Fikra API into the Lacesse Hub, our goal was simple: give developers an easy way to access AI models without fighting geographical payment blocks. But over the last few months, it became incredibly clear that Fikra was outgrowing its container.
Today, we are officially announcing that Fikra API has graduated from the Lacesse Hub and is now operating on its own dedicated infrastructure at fikraapi.co.ke.
Why the Spin-Off?
Building a native AI inference engine requires deep, specialized infrastructure. As we started scaling up hardware-accelerated routing with Groq and building out our Enterprise tier, keeping Fikra tucked inside the Lacesse Hub didn't make sense anymore. Fikra needed its own breathing room to scale.
More importantly, we wanted to completely re-engineer the billing engine. We built Fikra API because we were tired of watching brilliant developers hit a wall simply because Stripe doesn't support their region or a $20 monthly minimum is too steep for a weekend prototype. To fix that, we needed to build a custom wallet infrastructure from the ground up.
What's at the New Home?
If you head over to the new Fikra API, you'll find a platform built entirely around reducing friction for African developers:
- Native M-Pesa Top-ups: No credit card? No problem. Top up your API balance directly from your phone.
- Pay-As-You-Go Economics: A strict $1 minimum spend that gets you 2,000,000 tokens. You only pay for what you compute.
- Zero Code Rewrites: We are 100% OpenAI-compatible. Just change your base URL to
api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1, drop in your new Fikra API key, and your existing Python or JS code will run exactly as it did before.
What Happens to Fikra on Lacesse?
We've already updated the Lacesse Hub to point all traffic and documentation links to the new Fikra API website. Lacesse will continue to be your go-to resource and ecosystem for building and scaling, while Fikra operates as our dedicated, powerhouse inference engine.
To celebrate the launch of the independent platform, we're giving out 2 million free tokens to everyone who creates an account this week. Go grab your API key, change that one line of code, and let's see what you build.
