The Dreaded Middle Problem: Kenya’s Tech Sector Faces Crisis

Kenya loves her tech. Why else would we bask under the glare … I mean glow – of being the Silicon Savannah? But. There’s a problem, and it’s going to get huge if we are to compete on the global tech stage. The quiet, albeit persistent, attrition crisis among mid-career women.

The Women in the Workplace 2025: India, Nigeria, and Kenya report by McKinsey reveals a missed truth; while Kenyan women enter the tech workforce at relatively strong rates compared to other emerging markets, our representation falls sharply at the managerial level. More troubling is what happens at the midpoint of these careers: women in mid-level roles leave at nearly twice the rate of men, creating a leadership gap that compounds over time.

Women hold 40 out of every 100 entry-level roles in Kenya’s private-sector tech space, a significantly higher starting point than India (at 33 per cent) and Nigeria (also at 33 per cent). Granted, the public sector fares better, with women holding 46 per cent of entry-level roles. But from this promising base, the funnel narrows a little too quickly. In the private sector, representation drops from 40 per cent at the entry level to 34 per cent at the managerial level. By the C-suite, women account for just 28 per cent of leaders — despite making up nearly half of the national labour force.

Attrition plays a major role in this decline. McKinsey’s interviews highlight that while promotion opportunities exist, mid-level women often leave voluntarily due to a combination of burnout, stalled career progression, and exclusion from high-profile projects.

As one Nairobi-based engineering manager put it. “I was always the one asked to ‘help out’ with onboarding, to sit on the diversity committee, to speak at events. It was rewarding in its own way, but it took hours out of my week and didn’t count when my performance was reviewed. After a while, I realised I was running twice as fast just to stand still.”

This phenomenon — sometimes called “invisible work” — includes mentoring junior staff, representing the company at events, and shouldering diversity and inclusion tasks. While important to organisational culture, these activities are rarely tied to tangible advancement.

The Double Burden: Technical Delivery And Culture Work

The McKinsey report notes that Kenyan women in tech are often concentrated in roles that require both technical expertise and community-facing responsibilities; a combination of hard and soft skills. Dual demands that accelerate burnout, particularly in environments where performance reviews focus narrowly on billable output or technical deliverables.

One senior software developer shared that “When a crisis came up, like a client escalation, I’d get pulled in not just because of my skills but because I could ‘manage the tone.’ I was firefighting constantly. It made me visible, yes, but not in the way that leads to leadership opportunities.”

The situation echoes patterns seen in India, where women face a steep “broken rung” that first step into management with the very first promotion a woman gets in her career, and in Nigeria, where women maintain steady representation once inside but face higher mobility and attrition at senior levels. Kenya’s challenge is unique in that the initial entry is relatively strong until mid-career, when retention collapses.

Women exiting in droves at mid-level is more than a short-term HR problem — it’s actually a strategic threat. McKinsey warns that “Attrition at mid-career is one of the hardest losses to recover from. The talent you lose today is the leadership you will miss tomorrow.” Losing mid-level women reduces the pool of candidates for senior roles, which in turn diminishes diversity in decision-making. Research has repeatedly shown that gender-diverse leadership teams outperform homogeneous ones on innovation and market growth — critical advantages in a sector as fast-moving as tech.

Worse, attrition at this level triggers a visibility spiral: fewer women in senior technical roles means fewer role models for younger hires, which in turn reinforces perceptions that leadership in tech is a male domain.

Why Women Leave

Interviews with Kenyan women in tech point to several recurring themes:

• Invisible work overload: Women are more likely than men to be tapped for community-building, mentorship, and diversity initiatives — without adjustments in workload or recognition in promotions.
• Limited access to high-visibility projects: Key technical assignments often go to established male networks. Women who are left out of these projects miss the chance to showcase skills for advancement.
• Lack of structured sponsorship: While mentorship exists, sponsorship — where senior leaders actively advocate for a woman’s promotion or inclusion in strategic projects — is rare.
• Work-life collision: For mid-career women, often in their late 20s to 40s, career peaks coincide with peak caregiving years. Flexible work options exist, but are inconsistently supported by managers.

Lessons From Those Getting It Right

The report, mercifully, highlights organisations bucking the trend. One Kenyan fintech implemented a “visibility audit” to ensure all mid-level staff had equitable access to high-profile projects. Another introduced formal recognition for cultural contributions like mentoring and public speaking, weighing them in performance reviews.

A CTO from a Nairobi start-up explained, “We realised that the women who left were often the ones most embedded in our culture — the glue that held teams together. Now we track that work, reward it, and balance it across all employees, not just the women.”

McKinsey does make recommendations, several interventions to address the mid-career cliff:

• Revise performance metrics. Cultural impact in the organisation, as well as mentorship – which, in essence, qualifies as leadership- need to be acknowledged as contributions. Not just technical delivery.
• Create formal sponsorship programmes. In our April 2025 issue, Why Every Woman In Tech Needs A Male Sponsor, the need for pairing (mid-level) women with senior advocates who can open doors to high-impact projects was stated.
• When assigning plum projects, organisations need to ensure equitable allocation through transparent processes.
• Normalise flexible work by training managers on how to support hybrid and remote schedules without penalising career progression. Women with caregiving or parental responsibilities should get a fair shot at throwing their hats in the ring.

The tech sector has a golden opportunity to lead the continent in gender equity, but only if it addresses the silent crisis in its mid-level ranks. As one senior product manager put it. “I don’t want to leave — but I also don’t want to spend the next five years doing the work that gets applauded in speeches but ignored in promotions.”