news
Gender Centre
26 May 2026

Building a Gender-Transformative Digital Economy in Kenya: Reflections from the UPDATE Project

Insights and an overview of the UPDATE project, which examines how digital tools in Kenya can both create gender inequalities and empower women in digital spaces through inclusive policies.

In 2024, 35% of Kenyans were using the internet . Since then, connectivity has been expanding rapidly as 4G and 5G infrastructure spreads across the country. As a result, many workers in Kenya increasingly rely on digital tools and platforms in their daily work. From domestic workers to agricultural laborers, Kenyans have increasingly turned to platforms such as LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook and TikTok to find job opportunities or connect with clients. This growing digital ecosystem - alongside initiatives undertaken by the government to digitize much of public services - has helped position Kenya as one of Africa’s frontrunners in digitalization, attracting a rapidly expanding tech sector and a growing number of technology companies - including Microsoft’s 25 billion US$ hub in Nairobi.

While the expansion of the digital economy promises new opportunities and the potential for improved working conditions, it is important not to overlook the ways in which digital technologies can also reproduce or deepen existing inequalities. In countries such as Kenya, where social relations remain strongly gendered and domestic work constitutes a major source of income for many women, digital platforms can play a dual role. They may act as powerful drivers of empowerment, while simultaneously creating new risks and forms of exclusion.

In this environment, the research project “UPDATE - How digital spaces foster empowering gender-transformative employment policies and women’s mobilization in Kenya” emerged to better understand the use of digital tools by domestic, agricultural and tech workers in Kenya.

The research project has emerged through a collaboration among four institutions: the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern, the Gender Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID), the University of Nairobi, and Pollicy - a feminist technology collective based in Uganda that works across East Africa. The project is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as part of the Solution-oriented Research for Development (SOR4D) Programme.

This collaboration is central to the project’s strength. The partners’ transdisciplinary expertise enables nuanced, multi-dimensional analysis and the development of context-sensitive solutions. UPDATE aims to examine how women, men, and gender-nonconforming individuals use digital technologies to:

  • Access employment

  • Defend their rights

  • Influence policies, practices, and innovations related to their work 

The project seeks to generate evidence-based scenarios for how improved connectivity and digital work environments could be reimagined through a more feminist lens.

As part of this research, the UPDATE project team has met in Nairobi, Kenya on several occasions. These interactive meetings took place during the project design phase in September 2022, at the project’s inception in January 2025, and again in August 2025, when the team collectively developed methodological tools to initiate data collection. Most recently, the team convened for a fourth meeting in Nairobi at the end of February 2026. Each meeting provided a space for co-creation and collaborative thinking and analysis of the project's findings.

Like previous meetings, the fourth session was highly productive, enabling partners to co-develop guiding principles grounded in feminist and decolonial research approaches. 

Discussions focused on critical questions such as: 

  • What risks and challenges do digital platforms pose for women in finding dignified work, in particular in the domestic, agricultural and tech sectors? 
  • How can workers - particularly women - build digital resilience to avoid dependence on exploitative employers or unsafe online platforms? And how can digital users be empowered in this rapidly evolving digital landscape?

During these visits, the partners also engaged directly with women in the domestic, agricultural and tech sectors, enriching the research with diverse perspectives. Through these discussions, the team identified some important trends in how Kenyan women engage with the platforms, allowing them to begin shaping  recommendations for diverse stakeholders. 

The next meeting will be in August 2026, when Kenyan partners will come to Switzerland to meet with the members of the Gender Center at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) and the Center for Development and Environment at the University in Bern, as well as with other international stakeholders. The research findings will also be presented at the SOR4D research conference. 

Stay tuned for more information and upcoming publications from the project!