Consumer Insight’s latest survey takes a deep dive into the female economy to identify the hidden opportunities buried deep in the hearts of Kenyan women

We took an excursion into the mind of the Kenyan woman, and there we found sparkling gems that leave no doubt that this is a very important market segment that everyone should be keen to understand. What are the most important things in her life? How and where does she spend her money? How does she employ her downtime? Who are her role models? What values does she hold dear? Well, here’s a sample of what we found out…

Turn on your TV at any given time—on any given day—and you’ll quickly realise that the world is overly concerned with the twin high-profile wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. In fact, the prophets of doom are predicting a third world war, at best, and Armageddon at worst, to sprout out of either or both conflicts. But ask a Kenyan woman, and ‘a world at peace’ is the least of her current concerns: it ranks at the bottom of the top 10 most important things in her life. Besides money (which has jumped to position three), education, and career (both declining), the importance of all other things increases with age. Concerning her fears, death and joblessness decrease with age, while the most petrifying life-threatening diseases are cancer (prominent among 36–45-year-olds), HIV/AIDS among under-36-year-olds, and diabetes among over-45s. As you grow older, they say, all things eventually resolve themselves. And nowhere is this more in evidence than in the Kenyan woman.

In one of the more fascinating findings, we learned—purely by chance—that over-45s are the most religiously inclined demographic among Kenyan women, and are quite possibly the ones keeping churches in the black. When asked how they would spend, say, 100 million shillings if it suddenly fell on their laps, 35 per cent said, without hesitation, that they would pay tithe…compared to 22 per cent of under-36s and 26 per cent of the 36–45-year-old cohort. FACT: religiosity among Kenyan women, then, is directly proportional to age. Similarly, agriculture has the biggest pull for this group, with almost identical percentages. Keeping churches in business and feeding the nation aside, the top two aspirations among Kenyan women are owning a home and savings. What you do with this information is entirely up to you.

Meanwhile, modern feminism, in particular its challenging of traditional female roles, is yet to take a decent foothold among Kenyan women, it would appear. Overall, 66 per cent prefer to personally undertake household cooking duties, a trend most prominent in the low-income cadres, and gradually diminishing in the mid-and high-income groups. More women, therefore, are cooking themselves, with house-help cooking restricted to high-income households. Because why keep a dog when you can bark yourself? And what about those disinclined to cook? 37 per cent buy and consume ready-to-eat food from out-of-home, particularly the singles, the non-parents, and the high-incomes. These are the same groups that responded “Better!” when asked, “Compared to last year, is your life generally worse, the same, or better?” Lanes, people!

Now, have you ever been on YouTube and then out of the blue, an ad pops up, right in the middle of content you are watching with your own bundles? Kind of feels like an invasion of privacy, right? Acute irritation and impatience overcome you, and you couldn’t click skip any faster. Well, you’re not alone. Our research found that 33 per cent of Kenyan women always skip ads, with a skew to rural women. But every cloud has a silver lining: 57 per cent of them notice ads most or all of the time. So, it’s technically not money down the drain for advertisers. That said, the mobile phone remains the go-to gadget for internet access in the demographic, and those who go online via TVs and computers are typically high-income individuals. Wi-Fi usage is mainly through private networks, and usually at the workplace, with a skew to middle-income women.

This will come as a surprise to few: Citizen TV has a bigger share of viewership among Kenyan women, bigger even than all other TV stations combined. And among the top 11 TV stations, Kass is the least watched. Similarly, Radio Citizen is head and shoulders above all other radio stations. Interestingly, among the top 18, Spice FM is the least favourite; ironic, because it is targeted at “youth and women.” Moving swiftly onwards, as for those disinclined to free-to-air, 46 per cent subscribe to Pay TV, with a skew to 36–45-year-olds, and Garissa has the highest percentage of subscribers. GOtv is the biggest Pay TV service provider to the segment, with a skew to the lower economic classes, while DStv, a distant number two, caters mainly to the higher classes. Viusasa, owned by the same owners of Citizen TV and Radio Citizen, has barely made a dent in the Pay TV market. “You can’t win them all,” said the late Babe Didrikson Zaharias, American multi-sport athlete extraordinaire, “but you can try.”

According to FIFA.com, football is the most popular sport on the planet, with five billion fans. Our research corroborated this somewhat, and football’s dominance is unchallenged across the women segment. Athletics comes second. In third position for most watched sports is basketball; similarly, third most played and third most liked are volleyball and netball respectively. At the bottom of the list of sports both watched and played is boxing. Now an obscure 2015 survey titled ‘A Gender Inequality Study of Boxing and the 2012 Olympics’ by the American organisation Women’s States Developmental Football League (WSDFL) sought to “(a) determine if there is a gender inequality issue in boxing in regard to areas of pay, media attention, and availability and (b) to measure the thoughts of a college student population in regards to their knowledge of the inequalities in each of these areas.” The problem is likely closer to home if our findings are anything to go by: women are just not interested in boxing.

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These gems (and plenty more!) are contained in DAMA, a proprietary report by Consumer Insight that is targeted at helping individuals and organisations better understand women and their impact on the social and economic fabric of the country. It unveils the modern Kenyan woman in grand style by revealing compelling insights into their experiences and life journeys. DAMA covers a wide range of topics as it delves deep into the female economy to identify the hidden opportunities buried deep in the hearts of Kenyan women.

For more information on this study, contact Consumer Insight at info@ciafrica.com or +254 722 202313 / +254 722 509221.