The landing of the first fibre optic cable on Kenyan shores in June 2009 marked a major milestone in Kenya’s technology journey.

Connecting Base Transmission Stations using fibre optic cables enabled the rollout of 4G across the country.

Making the connections meant laying the cable in the ground, and with it the laborious and involving work of digging tunnels, putting in the ducts and then putting in the fibre optic cables.

Maureen Misoi was at the time working her way up the corporate ladder and she made an observation – while the deployment of fibre was being done by multinationals like Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson, they relied on local labour.

“That meant that the expertise was with us, and that’s where we saw a chance to get into it,” said Maureen.

She had a degree in Computer Science and therefore knew the technical side of things, and she had a Masters degree in Business Management, which combined with 15 years’ experience in corporate had prepared her for the rigours of running a business.

She started Optimax Group, an ICT company, and got into the business of offering ICT services.

As Optimax continued to gain experience, it started getting work as a Tier 2 subcontractor for Safaricom.

“We’d always wanted to work with these big telco companies, but we couldn’t without the experience,” Maureen recalled.

Optimax’s big break came in 2019, when Safaricom advertised for the pre-qualification of women-owned businesses to allow more women-owned businesses to be involved in their sourcing activities, capacity development training, mentorship, and coaching.

It was there that Maureen found the Women in Business (WIB) programme, which became a gamechanger for Optimax Group.

The mentorship programme gave them a foot in the door, and they got a chance to showcase their experience in the three years they had been doing engineering work.

Soon after, they secured a contract for accelerated Fibre To The Building (FTTB).

Experience proven, the company now supports Safaricom with enterprise support in Western Nyanza, solar, fibre rollout, and BTS rollout as a second-tier contractor. “That’s how we have grown from 2019 to having three to four contracts with Safaricom.”

WIB was founded in 2017 to empower women-owned business by giving them a fair share of procurement opportunities. The women in the programme are also provided with coaching and mentorship opportunities, and capacity building trainings to increase their participation in their supply chains.

For Maureen, being surrounded by other women-owned and women-led businesses like Fireside, Techminds and Pavicon in WIB is half the battle in seeking gender equality.

Despite the experience and the regular work, she said, access to finance is still a big headache in a business that needs hard cash to start and pay for equipment and labour.

ICT companies are generally capital intensive and require significant investment in infrastructure, machinery, buying equipment, acquiring licenses and hiring skilled personnel, and therefore need funding.

“To start off, you might not have X number of millions to start a business. So, you must talk to banks, friends and family to get that capital, so that even if you’re given one PO (Purchase Order), you can deliver that project,” Maureen said.

Fibre optic technicians who work at height and are responsible for installing, maintaining and repairing fibre optic network systems also require tools which are costly.

“Tools are a key resource. When you see just one person climbing a pole with a set of telecom power tools, those cost approximately a million shillings,” she said.

For Maureen, the biggest hurdle has been approaching banks.

“It’s a battle to get a facility in banks,” she said. “The effort we put as ladies is not the same as men when getting facilities. It does not make sense but that’s the reality even as recently as last month or yesterday. It’s just a bias.”

“Yet, I think it’s a plus for a woman-owned or woman-led organisation because we are naturally nurturers. So, it means we are prone to growing things. But these are some of the challenges that still exist right now,” she said.

The Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023 paints a bleak picture by estimating that it will take 131 years to reach gender parity. Despite significant advancement towards gender equality over the years, this data shows progress is moving at a snail’s pace.

Findings from a 2021 FSD Report titled Gendered Review of Financial Sector Laws in Kenya state that while Kenya has made significant strides in reducing financial exclusion for women, barriers still exist in the attainment of full gender equality.

“There is a need for more deliberate law and policy formulation and implementation carried out through a gender lens, to end financial exclusion which is a barrier to women’s empowerment and economic growth,” the report says.

Still, Maureen is hopeful that the narrative will change, and that the efforts in place at Optimax Group will contribute to empowering women in its journey to gender equality.

Finances aside, Misoi has had to face the fact that the tech industry is incredibly male dominated. Comments like “Hawa wanawake wanaweza kweli?” do little to shift this negative narrative.

But for her, these remarks are just water off a duck’s back. They’ve had no effect on fuelling her passion and dedication to growing her company to one day become a leader in the ICT and energy sector.