Funkie Fresh — trivia nights for a city that needs to actually talk to each other.

You know the scene. A Nairobi bar on a Friday, packed, music good and far too loud, and half the room on their phones, sitting six inches from strangers they will never speak to. We have never been more connected, and never more quietly lonely.

So with Derrick Ngokonyo, Samson Kihuha, Sharon Mutia and Emma Nyabicha, we started Funkie Fresh — a trivia and social experiences company built around one quietly radical idea: that strangers can become friends, if you just design the room so it can happen. The trivia is not the point. The trivia is the excuse — the permission that lets two people who would never have spoken lean across a table, argue about a capital city, groan at the same impossible question, and discover that they actually like each other.

My favourite moment, every single time, is a game called Human Bingo — where the only way to win is to physically get up and talk to strangers. There is a specific moment about ninety seconds in where the whole room hesitates, shy and clutching their cards. And then someone breaks, and within two minutes the entire room is on its feet, laughing and competing and meeting people they had sat in silence beside all evening. You cannot fake that. You can only build the conditions and watch humans do what humans, given half a chance, desperately want to do.

Not everything an economist does has to be serious. Sometimes the best forecast you can make is that a room full of strangers and a well-written quiz will end the night as friends.