Women now account for 35 per cent of Kenya’s Information and Communications Technology workforce, according to the Kenya ICT Authority’s 2026 State of the Sector Report released in June — the highest proportion recorded since the authority began tracking gender disaggregated employment data in 2011. The milestone represents a 12 percentage point increase over a decade and reflects a deliberate, multi-actor effort to address structural barriers that had long excluded women from one of Kenya’s fastest-growing and best-compensated economic sectors.
The figures span a broad range of roles: software engineers, data analysts, cybersecurity specialists, project managers, UX designers, and product managers employed across Kenya’s technology industry, from the multinational regional headquarters clustered in Nairobi’s Westlands and Upper Hill to the community-level digital service centres now operating in 29 counties. The ICT Authority estimates that approximately 87,000 women are currently employed in formal ICT roles, up from around 45,000 in 2016.
Programmes That Moved the Needle
Several interventions stand out as having demonstrably shifted the trajectory. AkiraChix, the Nairobi-based training and mentorship organisation, has graduated over 2,800 women from its engineering and design programmes since its founding, with 94 per cent employment rates within six months of graduation. Andela’s Kenyan cohorts — which since 2023 have operated as a fully remote placement programme rather than a residential fellowship — have included a female majority for the past three consecutive intake cycles. The government’s Ajira Digital programme, retooled in 2024 with a specific gender equity mandate, has allocated 40 per cent of its training slots to women and non-binary individuals.
“The stereotype that girls are not suited to mathematics and computing is dying, and it is dying because of visibility,” said Nanjala Nyabola, a Nairobi-based technology policy researcher. “When a girl in Eldoret can see a woman from her county who is a senior engineer at a global tech firm, the mental model shifts. That is what we have underestimated for years — the power of representation to change what young people believe is possible for them.”
The 5G rollout has had an indirect but significant effect on rural women’s access to tech training. Communities in Kisii, Meru, and Trans-Nzoia that previously lacked the bandwidth for reliable video streaming can now access online coding bootcamps and certification platforms such as Coursera and ALX Africa at speeds that make the experience genuinely comparable to what urban students receive. ALX Africa reported that 48 per cent of its Kenyan enrolments in the first half of 2026 were female — a reversal of the gender ratio that existed when the programme launched.
Gaps That Remain
The 35 per cent headline figure, while encouraging, masks significant variation across roles and seniority levels. Women remain severely underrepresented in senior technical positions: only 14 per cent of Chief Technology Officers at Kenyan tech companies are female, and women make up just 11 per cent of engineering team leads. The attrition of women from technical roles between junior and mid-career levels — the so-called “leaky pipeline” — remains a persistent problem, attributed by researchers to a combination of caregiving burdens concentrated on women, workplace cultures that undervalue contributions from female engineers, and pay gaps that compound over time.
A study by Strathmore University’s @iLabAfrica published in April 2026 found that female software engineers in Kenya earn on average 17 per cent less than their male counterparts at equivalent seniority levels, a gap that widens to 24 per cent at senior and principal engineer grades. The findings prompted calls from the Kenya ICT Board for mandatory pay equity reporting by technology companies with more than 50 employees — a proposal currently under review by the National Gender and Equality Commission.
The Gen Z cohort appears to be arriving in the tech workforce with different expectations. Young women who cut their teeth on the 2024 protest movement have demonstrated a willingness to organise collectively and confront institutional inequities that their predecessors, navigating a tighter formal job market, often felt unable to risk. Several Nairobi tech companies have reported the formation of internal women’s engineering chapters that have successfully negotiated changes to promotion criteria and parental leave policies. The numbers are moving in the right direction; the harder work of sustaining and deepening that progress is just beginning.
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