Progress To Date

October 2025

In Kenya, our strategy continues to focus on connecting individuals with low incomes to higher-wage opportunities, primarily in three key high value sectors—technology, agriculture, and construction—each with strong potential to lift lifetime earnings at scale. We are also expanding our focus to the large share of Kenyans working in the informal economy by supporting integration into formal pathways, entrepreneurship, and financial inclusion initiatives that enable income growth and long-term economic resilience.

What we’re learning

  1. Creating demand in addition to supply: Many workforce programs in Kenya focus on training individuals but don’t address job matching or stability. Improving employment and income requires not only building a skilled workforce but also stimulating labor demand. Some organizations are combining training with direct job creation—employing participants, embedding them in value chains, or contracting them through private sector partnerships (as demonstrated by our partners Tana and CAP-YEI). We believe these models have the potential to generate more stable jobs and higher wages by more closely linking workers directly to market demand or, in the case of agriculture, helping focus farmer production on higher-value crops. These training and demand-generation models are shaping our investment direction. Going forward, we will prioritize organizations that can generate, influence, or deeply understand labor demand—whether through direct employment creation, supply chain linkages, or industry partnerships that offer more stable income opportunities.
  2. Shifting focus from training inputs to employment outcomes: There’s growing momentum behind models that prioritize and better measure actual job placement and income gains over training completion alone. For example, our grantee partner, Instiglio, is driving the implementation of the Government of Kenya’s NYOTA program, which embeds results-based financing to connect youth employment initiatives to measurable outcomes and integrates performance-linked funding into public systems to reward demonstrated results. These results-based approaches help align incentives across providers, government, and partners, strengthening accountability and learning.
  3. Holistic support drives economic outcomes: Programs that integrate soft skills, psychosocial support, mentoring, and wraparound services are better equipped to address the complex barriers participants face. This is especially important for women and young people, who experience additional challenges such as family pressure, mental health needs, transportation issues, and limited access to safe learning environments. We’ve expanded support to holistic models that address these barriers, such as AkiraChix—a fully sponsored, year-long residential technology training program for young women from under-resourced communities across East Africa that combines technical training with mentorship and life skills development.
  4. AI & digital tools are expanding access—and reshaping labor markets: Digital tools such as chatbots, mobile learning platforms, and AI-powered business advisors are expanding access to training, education, and information, particularly for rural workers and entrepreneurs. However, barriers like affordability, connectivity, and digital fluency—especially among women—continue to limit reach. At the same time, AI and automation are reshaping labor markets, reducing outsourced business process automation and IT-related labor demand, and raising questions about future trends in job stability, skills relevance, and long-term wage growth for technical or data-related fields. We are examining which digital skills and delivery models remain viable, staying close to the labor impact data and employment trends, and exploring with our grantees how they might stimulate greater demand for Kenyan technical talent.
  5. Informal work is the dominant reality: Informal work, which accounts for over 80% of employment in Kenya, remains the primary source of income for most Kenyans, especially for women and youth with limited access to formal jobs. Many Kenyans pursue entrepreneurship out of necessity, but most operate in low-opportunity sectors that offer limited potential for growth. We are exploring opportunities within the informal economy—especially around formal integration pathways and enterprise supports that can improve earnings, enable job creation, and promote greater stability and upward mobility.

Activity to date

  1. 16 new grants approved since June 2024
    1. RestoringVision: Provides affordable reading glasses and vision services to people living in poverty worldwide, aiming to solve the global vision crisis
    2. One Acre Fund: Provides smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa with seeds, training, and financing to increase crop yields and income
    3. Raising The Village: Partners with last-mile communities in rural Kenya to eliminate ultra-poverty through a 24-month, data-driven program that boosts agricultural income, improves access to basic services, and builds local capacity for sustainable development
    4. Digital Green (renewal): Uses AI-powered tools like Farmer.Chat to deliver real-time, actionable advice to smallholder farmers. The platform has reached over 155,000 farmers in Kenya, improving yields and incomes by providing personalized, low-cost agricultural guidance
    5. Toolkit Foundation: Trains youth and women in technical and digital skills in Kenya, with our funding supporting the Welder Certification Program to boost employment opportunities
    6. Tana: Connects global companies with top African tech and data talent by sourcing, vetting, and training candidates for remote roles.
    7. AkiraChix: Equips young women from under-resourced communities in East Africa with a year-long residential program in software development and mentoring that builds confidence and agency, achieving strong job placement rates and reducing the gender divide in tech.
    8. Solar Sister: Empowers women in sub-Saharan Africa to become clean energy entrepreneurs, distributing solar-powered products and clean cookstoves to off-grid communities.
    9. African Center For Women, Information and Communications Technology: Empowers marginalized women and youth in Kenya through digital skills training, vocational education, and job placement to enhance employability and livelihoods.
    10. Generation: Equips underserved Kenyan youth with job-ready skills and connects them to employment in sectors like digital freelancing, customer service, and manufacturing.
    11. BuildHer (renewal): Provides low-income women in Kenya with 12-month training and job placement in construction trades like carpentry, tiling, and painting, aiming to increase women’s representation in the industry.
    12. CAP Youth Empowerment Institute (CAP-YEI) (renewal): Climate Smart Agriculture Training and Livelihoods Hub to equip youth with sustainable farming skills and improve income opportunities.
    13. Mercy Corp x JobTech Alliance: Supports Africa’s growing jobtech ecosystem by strengthening digital platforms that connect workers to gig, micro-enterprise, and formal employment opportunities. The alliance aims to create 1,000 quality jobs in one year and scale to 10,000 over five years through venture support, networks, and ecosystem-building.
    14. Accion International: Advances financial inclusion for women microentrepreneurs earning below $200/month by combining access to credit, digital tools, and business training. The project targets a 25% income increase while strengthening fintech partners serving low-income women.
    15. Chancen International: Expands access to higher education and formal employment for low-income youth through Income Share Agreements (ISAs). Students train with no upfront costs and repay only once employed, achieving up to fivefold income gains and sustainable pathways to formal sector jobs.
    16. Instiglio: Provides technical assistance to Government of Kenya’s $229M NYOTA program, embedding results-based financing to link youth employment programs to measurable income growth. The initiative aims to help 10,000 vulnerable youth transition from informal work into stable jobs and small enterprises in its first year, with plans to scale to 100,000 participants over five years.
  2. Applications and concepts in the pipeline
    1. Opportunity International - digitizing farmers’ savings groups and piloting FarmerAI to boost productivity, expand access to finance, and strengthen resilience among smallholder farmers.
    2. Regen Organics - converting organic waste into sustainable agricultural inputs to advance regenerative agriculture, improve soil health, increase farmer incomes, and create green jobs.
    3. Hatua Network - equipping Kenyan youth with the education, soft skills, and professional networks to expand career access into formal jobs and break generational poverty
  3. GTLF team trips to East Africa in May and June 2025: team members attended the Segal Family Foundation Connect Conference in Tanzania, the 9th East Africa Philanthropy Conference in Rwanda and the Livelihood Impact Fund convening in Kenya to to connect with funders and NGOs active in the region, and to conduct site visits with grantee partners.
    1. Philanthropy landscape: shared themes include:
      1. Locally led leadership is central to sustainable systems change; organizations rooted in their communities are best positioned to design solutions that reflect lived realities and adapt as local economies and labor markets evolve.
      2. Growing emphasis on collaborative, ecosystem-based approaches, where funders align evidence, learning, and resources rather than operating in isolation.
      3. Recognition of the role of funders as catalysts, not drivers—supporting local actors through capacity building, data access, and flexible funding that enables experimentation and adaptation.
    2. Site visit to our grantee partner Akirachix captured in this blog

Next Steps

  1. Action oriented market research: Engage an African-led consulting firm to conduct market analysis, refine the Kenya strategy, test key assumptions, and identify cost-efficient investments for sustained income gains and systems-level impact.This will help us synthesize lessons across investments and sectors to inform future strategy and share learnings with partners.
  2. Expand reach and sourcing partnerships: Continue targeted outreach to NGOs and strengthen partnerships and shared learning with funders active in the Kenyan market.
  3. Deepen demand alignment: Strengthen how we support organizations to generate, influence, or directly respond to labor market demand by helping them better understand and meet the needs of their target markets—whether through identifying in-demand skills, cultivating employer partnerships, creating direct employment opportunities, or integrating workers into value and supply chains.
  4. Funder partnerships for systems change: Pursue additional collaborations with regional funders and ecosystem builders to amplify collective impact—enabling coordinated investments that reach more people, influence larger systems, and reinforce locally led solutions.

June 2024

GitLab Foundation launched our Kenya strategy in December 2023 with a focus on three opportunities to increase wages for low income Kenyans: distributing income impacts of the technology industry, improving market access and income generation for farmers, and increasing local employment in infrastructure-related construction trades.

What we’re learning

  1. Challenges in investing in trade employment: There is a large volume of active organizations in the first two sub-strategies (tech training and agriculture), and a much smaller number helping Kenyans to take advantage of employment arising from large-scale investments in housing and infrastructure.
  2. Oversubscription on training, employment still lacking: We have heard from many partners that technology-related training programs are in overabundance, with many attendees participating in multiple trainings at a time; yet, pathways to stable employment are lacking. Employment trends (i.e. layoffs and slower hiring) in the technology labor market and problematic labor practices have been challenging in the short term.
  3. Young workers have an opportunity to revitalize farming: Like many sectors in Kenya, the agricultural sector needs modernization and new approaches to stay competitive. Yet, even in one of the youngest countries in the world, the average age of Kenyan farmers is now 62 years old. This demographic challenge hampers productivity gains in the sector responsible for 33 percent of Kenya’s GDP, employing one third of the total population and nearly 70 percent of the rural population.
  4. Disaster impacts everyone: Kenya is reeling from historic flooding that has destabilized the lives of hundreds of thousands throughout the country, closing more than 1,000 schools and destroying thousands of homes. In Nairobi, the poorest communities have been hit hardest, which has impacted our grantees Generation, CFK, CAP-YEI, and BuildHer. These types of disasters may impact our grantmaking strategy as they create unstable conditions for training and employment, i.e., reducing ROI and increasing cost.
  5. DIL vs NSROI: The use of a relative income change metric has been valuable in reviewing grant opportunities in low-income settings such as Kenya. We are currently actively evaluating all grants using both the DIL and the NSROI metrics and will be making a determination on the best path forward for evaluation standards later this year. To date, less than half of Kenyan grantees surpass the NSROI 100x threshold, whereas 100% pass the $1,000 cost per DIL threshold.

Activity to date

  1. 9 Active Grants
    1. Generation Kenya - Technology training: short term / gig employment focus
      1. Renewed in 2024
    2. Kibo School - Technology training (longer term credential, FT focus)
      1. Note that in June 2024 we learned that Kibo school was shuttering. More details to come shortly; a grant close-out call is scheduled for June 11.
    3. 10 Academy - Technology training: longer-term credential, full-time focus
    4. CFK - Technology training: short term / gig employment focus
    5. Digital Green - Agriculture: AI-enabled farm chat bot
    6. BuildHer - Construction trades: enabling women to reach full-time employment
    7. CAP-YEI - Agriculture: increasing income through modern ag practices
    8. Tana - Paid work based training programs in partnership with international employers.
    9. Raising the Village - Wraparound supports for rural communities (Uganda focus currently) to help increase income.

Next Steps

  1. Explore Developing an Operating Plan with Local Partners to help increase the pipeline of organizations addressing skilled trades training and modern agricultural practices. This may mean more formal grantee pipeline collaboration, sharing local staffing for due diligence and grantee outreach or developing larger scale multi-funder projects,
  2. Continue to build networks in country: GitLab Foundation staff are actively building networks in Kenya to expand our pipeline and build collaborative funding or pipeline sharing partnerships with locally active funders including Ezrah Charitable Trust, Livelihood Impact Fund, Conrad Hilton Foundation, and Segal Family Foundation.
  3. Two trips planned for 2024
    1. July 2024: E. Africa Philanthropy Network Summit & outreach meetings
    2. Fall / Winter 2024: Focused funder convening, potentially in partnership with Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), Ezrah Charitable Trust, Livelihood Impact Fund, Conrad Hilton Foundation, Segal Family Foundation, and others.
  4. Targeted NGO network outreach: Specific focus and outreach in agriculture, vocational trades and potentially small and medium enterprise (SME) or livelihood programs that link to the creating income growth for Kenyans. We have begun this by establishing routine pipeline sharing meetings with active funders in the market, but are working to deepen these networks to get past the routinely funded organizations to less traditional grantees.

Monitor risks and impacts from local natural disasters

such as recent flooding and assess any implications for strategy in our grants into Kenyan organizations.

Initial Strategy

December 2023

GitLab Foundation is proposing a labor demand-side strategy focused on building better linkages between Kenyan workers and growing relevant global industries and markets. We will initially begin with a segmented portfolio working across three main industries with significant positive employment and foreign direct investment trends: technology, infrastructure, and agriculture.

Context and Overview

Kenya’s growth and demographic trends, high income inequality, relatively stable government, and history of philanthropic and NGO activity elevated the country as a priority region to advance our North Star ROI outcomes. In-depth research, a targeted landscape analysis, stakeholder interviews, and site visits have been formative to our strategy.

While growth of the economy and population are strong, there is a persistent gap between industries where higher-income jobs are created and the existing training and employment pathways available to most Kenyans. To put that in a demographic context, the International Labor Organization estimates:

Nearly one half of young Kenyans are in transition between school and satisfactory employment. This is a fairly high share even for Africa, which has a higher prevalence of young people ‘in transition’ than other regions.

Key Macroeconomic Trends

These are five macroeconomic trends we see as framing the future of Kenya’s employment and wage growth for the coming decades.

  1. Nairobi’s Emergence as a Global Technology Hub: Kenya, sometimes called the Silicon Savannah, is one of the most technology-advanced countries in Africa, and now also one of the most globally connected, with six undersea fiber optic cables, nearly 60% of Kenyans owning a smartphone, and 96% of households using a mobile money account. These trends of connectivity to global markets have helped to drive growth in startup activity and global technology investment, and are rapidly changing the landscape of education and employment. ****Connectivity has also helped to spur foreign direct investment in Kenya. Global VC investment in Africa continued to increase in 2022 despite a downturn in every other major market, with Kenya taking fourth in the list of the top VC African markets after Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. The four markets account for over 70% of the total VC funding in Africa.

Source: April 2023 Venture Capital in Africa Report - AVCA

Source: April 2023 Venture Capital in Africa Report - AVCA

  1. Jua Kali - Kenya’s Informal Economy: Meaning ‘hot sun’ in Swahili, Jua Kali is used to refer to the informal sector of traders and small business owners. The sector provides employment to a stunning 83 percent of the working population, but only provides 32% of the national GDP. These positions earn less, have fewer worker protections, and do not garner safety net benefits.
  2. Youth and Demographic Transition: By 2050, one out of every four people on the earth will be African. Like nearly all African nations, Kenya is facing a “youth bulge” with 75% of the Kenyan population below 35 years old. This large and growing population bubble will significantly impact Kenya's economy for decades. Only 38% of Kenyans between the ages of 15 and 24 years participate in the labor force due to many factors, including lacking in-demand skills for the jobs available, lack of education, and location and transit challenges.
  3. Agriculture and the Rural / Urban Divide: The agricultural sector makes up 33 percent of Kenya’s GDP and employs one third of workers (and nearly 70 percent of rural workers). However, agricultural productivity has stagnated, with smallholder farmers and agricultural industries struggling to remain profitable. This challenge impacts millions of Kenyans across the country and drives rural to urban migration, further exacerbating poverty and joblessness in urban centers. Initiatives focusing on increasing farm yield, connectivity to markets, and value creation (e.g., the World Bank’s National Agriculture Value Chain Development Project) may have outsized returns.
  4. Infrastructure and Construction: As Kenya’s population has grown, the demand for infrastructure investments has increased in every part of the nation, driving construction industry growth up nearly 7% YoY for the last two years. From roads, ports, rail lines and bridges, and energy grid modernization to affordable housing, airport expansions, and internet connectivity – Kenya has thousands of projects large and small in development or in demand. Kenya also continues to lead in investing in green energy infrastructure, targeting 100% renewable energy generation by 2030, up from an already impressive 90%, primarily due to large geothermal, hydro and wind generation. This shift to renewable energy continues to attract large scale global investors seeking to meet the growing demand.

Strategic Considerations and Investments

Given these macroeconomic conditions, we have narrowed to three specific strategic focus areas that we believe will maximize increases in total lifetime earnings in Kenya. Below are specific hypotheses that will drive our early grantmaking in this market:

  1. Distributing Income Impacts of the Technology Industry
  2. Improving Market Access and Income for Farmers
  3. Increasing Local Employment in Infrastructure-Related Construction Trades

Next Steps (as of Dec 2023):

  1. Clarify grantmaking strategy with learning and experimentation framework:
  2. Gather additional feedback on strategy summary from existing active funders, relevant agencies working in Kenya and trusted NGOs:
  3. Plan additional travel to Kenya in 2024 for in-person portfolio check in and funder collaboration event(s)