Next Wave: Kenya’s cybersecurity ‘talent gap’ is a hiring problem

This week, my colleague Adonijah published a piece about how Kenya’s digital economy is expanding rapidly and how that growth has come with its own set of problems. Banks, telecom companies, and insurers are expanding their mobile-first services. Government services are also going online, and with that comes a sharper need for cybersecurity. The risks are growing, and so is the demand for talent that isn’t just there, or so we have been made to believe.

Kenya’s cybersecurity workforce gap is often framed as a supply problem, and the result, we’re told, is understaffed banks, overworked tech teams, slow response to incidents, and dangerous exposure to digital threats. But, this version of the story sidesteps a harder question: what if the problem isn’t that the talent doesn’t exist, but that hiring systems are too rigid and narrow, and too flawed to recognise it?

The dominant logic across these sectors (especially in banking, for this context) is that hiring cybersecurity professionals should be technical, standardised, and rigorous. Roles are posted with lengthy checklists that include multiple certifications, years of experience, and specialised areas of expertise. Interviews, if they happen at all, are modelled after global formats, usually by solving a puzzle on a whiteboard, proving you know complex algorithms, or passing a coding test under pressure. But few local candidates make it through these filters, not because they aren’t skilled, but because the format itself works to exclude them.

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Technical interviews often reward the ability to perform under artificial, time-pressured conditions, not real-world competence. I spoke with former college and high school classmates who work in banking, telecommunications, and big tech (Google and Microsoft). Before they were hired for these international roles, they admitted to being asked to solve sorting problems, tree traversals, and optimisation challenges they hardly face on the job.

They were expected to write perfect code on a whiteboard or shared doc, from memory, without syntax help, debugging tools, or a collaborative setup. There’s an unspoken belief that this is how you separate “real” engineers from the rest. But what it actually filters for is who studied computer science in the right way or who enjoys brain teasers under surveillance. It is something that just doesn’t work.

This problem is shaping how local employers screen tech talent. In Nairobi, technical interviews are increasingly mimicking this pattern, especially in firms that want to compete with or supply to international partners. And in the process, they’re weeding out strong candidates who think differently, communicate differently, or just haven’t had the luxury to rehearse interview puzzles for weeks.

I have been told by the same group that certifications are treated as mandatory in most Kenyan cybersecurity job listings (I now understand why they are such a big deal on LinkedIn). Yet a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification costs more than most entry-level IT workers make in several months.

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And even those who invest in it still find themselves screened out if they lack the ‘right’ work history or can’t demonstrate fluency in jargon during interviews. Meanwhile, there are thousands of capable IT professionals, including network engineers and support staff who’ve spent years in adjacent roles, responding to incidents, managing infrastructure, or securing systems informally. They’re already doing half the job, but because hiring filters are rigid, they never even get interviewed.

Candidates who struggle with high-pressure environments tend to flounder in traditional interview formats. A close friend who worked in a software development firm in Uganda described how a colleague with a shy streak consistently failed interviews, despite being easily the most talented developer they had ever worked with. His mind worked differently, but the process never made space for that.

In other cases, some say that interviews are adversarial, especially for Kenyan banks. You’re asked to perform a trick the interviewer already knows the answer to, under judgment, with little real collaboration or feedback. And if you ask for clarification or go off-script, you risk triggering visible frustration. Some interviewers even nitpick syntax during whiteboard sessions, defeating the point of the tool as a sketchpad for thinking.

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What’s most concerning is that this interview culture—while claiming to be objective—is riddled with bias. Candidates who don’t live in Nairobi or didn’t go to JKUAT or Strathmore are less likely to be taken seriously. And because the process rewards fluency in academic algorithms and fast recall over real-world problem-solving, it disproportionately advantages younger candidates who recently studied those topics or those who have the spare time to grind interview prep. People with practical business experience, like delivering on projects, managing security under pressure, or navigating messy legacy systems, are penalised because they can’t whiteboard a binary search tree in 20 minutes.

This is how Kenya has ended up with a false perception of a shortage. A talent pool that exists but is largely invisible to current hiring filters. Employers say they can’t find people, but what they often mean is they can’t find people who fit a very narrow image of what skilled looks like. And in chasing that image, they’re letting real, practical, trainable talent walk out the door.

Kenn Abuya

Senior Reporter

Thank you for reading this far. Feel free to email kenn[at]bigcabal.com, with your thoughts about this edition of NextWave. Or just click reply to share your thoughts and feedback.