Give to Gain: The human-centric formula for Kenya’s economic breakthrough
To build our strongest economy, we need a balanced portfolio of leadership and ideas.
What you need to know:
- Kenya’s economic growth is constrained by underinvestment in women entrepreneurs despite evidence showing women-led startups deliver stronger revenue efficiency.
- Closing the $3 billion credit gap for women-led SMEs could unlock jobs, innovation, and stronger economic resilience nationwide.
As we mark International Women’s Month, we embrace a clear principle: Give to Gain. Backing women should not be perceived as just another act of goodwill, but a deliberate strategy for sustainable growth. It suggests that our nation’s prosperity is not a finite resource to be divided, but a force to be multiplied. Yet, the latest data reveals we are leaving one of our most powerful multipliers on the sidelines. The 2025 Briter Bridges report shows that funding for all-female founding teams in Africa has fallen to a mere 1.8 per cent.
This statistic should not be viewed as an indictment but an invitation. It reveals a massive, untapped opportunity for growth. My position is this: Kenya's full economic potential is being artificially capped because most our financial systems are optimised for a single, homogenous definition of investment, overlooking the diverse and highly profitable models that women entrepreneurs bring to the table. To build our strongest economy, we need a balanced portfolio of leadership and ideas.
This is not a question of goodwill but one of bias. Loss aversion, as identified by Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist best known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, explains why potential losses loom larger than potential gains in our minds. In capital allocation, that bias reinforces historical investment patterns and slows the reallocation of capital towards emerging, and often underfunded, sectors. This is a human trait, not a male one, but it has resulted in a system that repeatedly funds one type of pattern while overlooking others.
This is where the opportunity lies. A 2025 Boston Consulting Group analysis reveals that businesses founded by women often operate with a different DNA. For every dollar of funding, they generate 82 cents in revenue, compared to 34 cents for startups with other founding teams. This doesn't suggest one is "better," but that they are different and complementary. Women are often building businesses focused on capital efficiency, sustainable growth, and deep community integration. These models have resilience as their backbone that is absolutely critical for a modern, shock-proof economy.
By not fully funding these models, we are not just limiting opportunities for women but also limiting the resilience and dynamism of our entire market. According to a 2025 Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Kenya report, the credit gap for women-led SMEs now exceeds $3 billion. Imagine the jobs, the innovation, and the community wealth that could be unlocked if we saw this gap not as a risk to be managed, but as a massive market to be served.
Critics may call this a distraction from pure, prudent risk management. On the contrary, true prudence is diversification. Any seasoned investor knows that concentrating all your capital in a single asset class is the riskiest strategy of all. The same is true for human capital. A financial system that overwhelmingly backs one demographic and one style of leadership is, by definition, an unbalanced and therefore more vulnerable system.
Bringing the theme of “Give to Gain” to life requires a collaborative redesign of our approach, moving forward together.
As public and private sector players, we have a shared opportunity to evolve how we measure success. Having made significant progress in expanding financial access, the next frontier must be economic mobility. Access alone does not guarantee advancement. It is time to deepen the conversation and ask a more important question: who is moving up?
A national dialogue, informed by the expertise of policymakers could help develop smarter metrics that track the flow of growth capital to diverse and high-potential enterprises. This way, inclusion won’t be solely measured by the number of accounts opened, but by whether capital is translating into sustained enterprise growth and shared prosperity.
At the same time, we should reimagine how private sector capital can be mobilised for this next phase. For instance, can our fiscal framework be calibrated to incentivise balanced investment portfolios that include emerging entrepreneurs alongside established players?
Ultimately, the most immediate power lies within Kenya’s private sector. Policy can shape the environment, but capital allocation determines outcomes. “Give to Gain” is not about dividing opportunity more thinly. It is about expanding it. When we intentionally broaden who sits at the table, we strengthen the quality of decisions, the resilience of our enterprises, and the scale of our growth.
Nations that will thrive in the next decade will be those that treat diversity as an economic engine, not a checkbox. Kenya has the chance to set the global benchmark: a market where inclusion is synonymous with innovation, and where prosperity is multiplied by every voice at the table. That is the true meaning of ‘Give to Gain'.
The author is the Head of Stanbic Foundation.
