Global Business Services

Scaling Kenya’s export-oriented services sector

Kenya’s Global Business Services (GBS) sector is one of the fastest pathways to large-scale job creation in East Africa.

Gatsby Africa is working with government and industry to unlock the sector’s next phase of growth: moving Kenya from around 14,000 export-oriented jobs today to a globally competitive services hub capable of generating well over 100,000 jobs by 2034.

Our ambition is to help unlock Kenya’s Global Business Services sector — catalysing the investment, competitiveness and coordination needed to create tens of thousands of quality jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in export revenue by 2034.

export-oriented GBS jobs in
Kenya today, across 22+
international operators

additional jobs unlockable
by 2034, with 45,000+
targeted within 5 years

in additional annual export
revenue the sector could
unlock by 2034

The Opportunity

A nascent sector with room to scale fast

The Global Business Services sector covers export-oriented, tradeable services delivered by international and regional operators serving global markets.

Kenya is already home to a nascent but promising sector: around 14,000¹ workers across over twenty two international operators, based mainly in Nairobi and Mombasa, with room to expand into further cities over time.

Kenya’s large, English-speaking workforce and established training pipeline mean entry-level skills are not what’s holding the sector back. Beyond entry-level capability, Kenya’s proposition is also evolving with global demand: the country already has a proven base in AI data services, where Kenyan teams help global enterprises validate and prepare the data that trains AI systems, lifting model accuracy and cutting processing time for clients. Kenya is now building on this foundation to move into higher-value, AI-enabled delivery, combining AI augmentation with the human judgement, validation and oversight that complex global operations still require, as seen in emerging GenAI-enabled legal services delivered from Nairobi.

The real barriers lie elsewhere: the credibility of Kenya’s investment proposition, limited access to the market-makers who influence where global operators locate, a fragmented investor journey, and an enabling environment not yet tailored to what GBS investors need.

This is why Gatsby Africa is focusing its support on the areas where it can be genuinely additional: generating and converting investor demand, strengthening the enabling environment, and building the industry coordination needed to sustain growth.

¹ This figure refers to Kenya’s international, export-oriented GBS workforce — the segment this programme targets. That same data also cites a larger total GBS workforce of 37,415, which additionally includes domestic-facing (non-export) roles serving the local market. The two figures describe different populations, not conflicting counts of the same one.

OUR INTERVENTION AREAS

Where we focus, and why

We focus on three areas where Kenya’s GBS sector can unlock further growth: attracting investment, strengthening country competitiveness and improving industry coordination.

These areas are closely connected. Investment brings new operators, jobs and evidence of Kenya’s potential. A stronger enabling environment gives businesses the confidence to invest and expand. Effective industry coordination helps the sector engage government with a clear, shared voice and ensures emerging skills needs are reflected in the wider system.

Progress in one area can therefore reinforce progress in the others, creating conditions for a more competitive, coordinated and investment-ready GBS sector.

FOCUS AREA 1
Targeted Demand Generation
Attracting and scaling GBS investment in Kenya delivery

Global and regional operators are the commercial engine of the sector — every job created starts with an investment decision. We’re working to raise the credibility and visibility of Kenya’s value proposition with the investors and analysts who influence where operators locate, build a clearer, better-supported investor journey from first interest through to due diligence and piloting, and help operators already established in Kenya scale further.

FOCUS AREA 2
Enhancing Country Competitiveness
Building a conducive enabling environment

Strong investor interest and industry coordination alone aren’t enough — government has a critical role in making Kenya cost-competitive and easy to invest in. We’re working with credible government champions to deliver a small number of practical, high-impact actions — from incentives benchmarked against global competitors to streamlined policies such as transfer pricing and work permits — that build investor confidence without waiting for comprehensive reform. consistency and supply reliability.

FOCUS AREA 3
Building Effective Industry Coordination
A unified voice for the sector

Many of the challenges facing GBS operators — from infrastructure to skills gaps to government engagement — are shared across the industry and can’t be solved firm by firm. We’re supporting an industry association to evolve from convening members to genuinely coordinating action: engaging government with one voice, supporting new investors and setting shared sector priorities — with the goal of an association that can sustain itself independent of Gatsby’s support. .

A fourth growth driver — talent development and AI enablement — remains critical to the sector’s long-term health. Significant investment in this area already exists, so Gatsby Africa’s role is to monitor it as the sector matures rather than lead it directly.

OUR APPROACH IN KENYA

Focused where we can be most additional

We’re concentrating our support on large international and regional operators (100+ seats) — both new entrants and existing operators — primarily in Nairobi and Mombasa, because this segment offers the fastest route to scalable job creation. We’re taking a deliberately catalytic role: not replacing commercial decision-making or industry coordination, but strengthening the system around it — clarifying investor pathways, resolving shared constraints that no single firm can fix alone, and helping government and industry work together more effectively.

For now, we’re watching and learning in Rwanda, while Tanzania and Uganda remain outside our immediate focus.

Interested in exploring Kenya as a delivery location, or partnering with us on this work? Get in touch on ga.gbs@gatsbyafrica.org.uk