Why Kenya Is Prioritising Global Business Services 🇰🇪 Kenya is positioning Global Business Services (GBS) as a strategic pillar of our digital economy — a globally competitive export industry capable of creating quality careers at scale. Speaking at Catalyse Kenya 2026 in Nairobi, I emphasised our ambition to grow the GBS workforce from approximately 40,000 today to 100,000 quality careers by 2030, contributing to the wider national ambition of enabling at least one million digital workers. My speech was delivered on my behalf by Secretary, Cybersecurity and Audit Control, Mr Emmanuel Kata Kimeu, representing the State Department for ICT and the Digital Economy. GBS is about jobs, exports and maximising the value of our digital infrastructure. Kenya has invested in fibre connectivity, eight submarine cables, public Wi-Fi, data-centre capacity and digital hubs. Our proposition includes a strong English-speaking talent pool, competitive operating costs, GMT+3 time zone, an expanding digital-skills pipeline and a maturing technology and regulatory ecosystem. AI is reshaping global GBS. Kenya therefore intends to move up the value chain into AI data services, model evaluation, multilingual and African-language datasets, analytics, engineering, exception handling and specialised knowledge processes. Trust remains central. Strong data protection, cybersecurity, responsible digital work practices and appropriate protections for digital workers are increasingly important to global clients locating sensitive and high-value operations. We must also take GBS beyond Nairobi. On 16 October 2026, we will convene a BPO Stakeholder Roundtable in Eldoret, bringing together government, BPO operators, investors, training institutions and ecosystem partners to identify opportunities for expanding operations, strengthening the talent pipeline and establishing new BPO growth centres across Kenya. Reaching 100,000 quality careers will require connecting talent from across Kenya to global opportunities. I appreciate The Knowledge Group (TKG), Gatsby Africa, CCI Global, Teleperformance and the Outsourcing Alliance of Kenya (OAK) for convening Catalyse Kenya 2026, and the participation of @Dave ramble Ramble, @Joel Walker of TKG, Rishi Jattania of CCI Global, Andrew Wrobel of Reinvantage, Peggy Mativo of Gatsby Africa and Sven of Teleperformance. The forum also brought together visiting leaders including Alastair Brass of Amplify5, Noel Carbett of FirstSource, Tertia Ann Van Staden of Nutun, Francios Burger of SoluGrowth, Robert De Souza of Sutherland, Kinesh Maistry of iTalk International, Guillaume Tridemy of Vodafone, Victor Manzanera of ScaleEdge Group and Rod Jones of African Business Alliance, alongside the wider GBS ecosystem. Our message to global GBS operators is straightforward: scale here, build the talent pipeline with us, bring higher-value work to Kenya and expand beyond Nairobi.