Lead image for From Juja to Shenzhen: How three women found their place in technology.
Faith Mosonik, Melanie Minayo and Joanne Kinoti still remember walking into their first computer science class at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and doing a quick headcount.
Out of roughly 100 students, only about 20 were women. That imbalance followed them through their four years, into laboratories and late-night coding sessions, and eventually all the way to Shenzhen, China, for the global finals of one of the world's biggest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) competitions, where they again found themselves outnumbered.
But this time, they were not asking whether they belonged. They were representing Team Kenya in the computing track of the Huawei ICT Competition 2025–26.
For them, it was about more than technical skill. It was the culmination of a journey of self-belief that took them from lecture halls in Juja to a stage in one of China's leading technology cities, competing alongside some of the brightest university students in the world.
Read: How Kenyan girls are shaping the future of ICT
Kenya fielded 12 students drawn from universities across the country, organised into teams of three. They joined more than 200,000 participants from around the world, tested on their skills in networking, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and programming.
Team Kenya bagged the grand prize in the cloud track. The network track team secured second prize, while an all-women computing team from JKUAT also won second prize and, to top it off, took home the prestigious Women in Tech Award. Faith, Melanie and Joanne finished as second runners-up in the computing track, competing against 131 elite teams from more than 40 countries and regions.
Following Team Kenya's strong showing at the June competition, President William Ruto hosted the students at State House, Nairobi, on July 28, 2026. “Kenya emerged as a star performer in the competition, with three teams reaching the global finals in Shenzhen, China, and returned home with top honours,” the President wrote in a post on that day.