Nairobi Team

This is a ReachUp! community folder created for the Nairobi team.

Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, is the most populous city in East Africa with an estimated population of between 3 and 4 million. Nairobi or popularly known as the “green city in the sun” is a cosmopolitan and multicultural city. In this city you will find people of different economic status with the extremes being the urban rich and the urban poor. In Nairobi the urban poor continue to face different forms of exclusions including education, infrastructure, language, access to financial services and employment. With the Kenya’s unemployment rate at over 40% it is no wonder that the unprecedented violence that rocked the country at the beginning of the year was largely perpetrated by the unemployed young people.

Digital Opportunity Trust has recognized that entrepreneurship knowledge and ICT skills can turn this situation around by improving the livelihoods of the poor. Through the ReachUp! program Digital Opportunity Trust has managed to reach over 1300 beneficiaries in Nairobi since 2006. For this people life will never be the same; they have received skills that will enable them develop sustainable livelihoods. In fact some of the beneficiaries are currently running their businesses and some of these businesses have started creating employment for others.


The plans to make the Nairobi a metropolitan and the foreseen vision 2030 whose aim is to make Kenya a middle income country, should not find Kenyans technologically illiterate. Digital Opportunity Trust ReachUp! program has been well received in Nairobi since it trains the beneficiaries on not only how to use the computer but also how to use it in every day life. Thus the ICT skills are not learnt in a vacuum but within the societal business context. In 2008 Digital Opportunity Trust is working with 5 interns and over 20 partner centers in Nairobi. The interns are currently hard at work building capacities & improving livelihoods of young people in Nairobi.