Meet the Kenyan women entrepreneurs transforming marketing, fashion and enterprises

Growing up in a village, most young Kenyan girls face many challenges, especially balancing household chores with their studies. For Monica Kabui, however, spending her childhood in her family's rural home in Nyahururu gave her the opportunity to enjoy playing in her parents' wheat fields.

She says the buying and selling of wheat was the most enjoyable part of her school holidays. Gradually, it sparked her love for mathematics, a subject that was largely dominated by boys during her primary and secondary school years. “I remember my mum would allow us to bill customers, count the money and hand it over to her whenever schools closed. Besides being a wheat farmer, she also ran a wheat mill. Working there taught me a lot about business, and I admired what she did,” Monica recalls.

As she began to understand the close relationship between mathematics and business, her love for mathematics grew, and so did her performance. After completing secondary school, her older brother accompanied her to university, where she enrolled for a bachelor's degree in Industrial Mathematics. The gender gap in the classroom was obvious.

“It was interesting because there were only two girls in the class. Sometimes, when you are a woman in a field dominated by men, people assume you need extra help, support and direction. However, in our class, we proved ourselves. I remember some of my male classmates came to me to understand concepts from my perspective, and that made me feel proud and validated because, at that point, the playing field was level for everyone,” Monica says.

After graduating, she struggled to secure a job, reflecting how men still dominated employment opportunities beyond the classroom. “When I studied Industrial Mathematics, I dreamed of working for an insurance company, but that never happened. While working on my university project, I developed an interest in graphic design and eventually became a self-taught graphic designer. Even then, I did not get a job immediately,” she says.