Sh63,000 a Month: The Job 1.5 Million Kenyans Now Do

One in every twenty working Kenyans now earns a living from a phone screen. A March 2026 study by Bolt and research firm Ipsos put the Kenya gig economy at just over $1.03 billion a year — reported locally as roughly Sh129 billion — and counted about 1.5 million people working inside it. The average Bolt driver in that survey grossed Sh63,000 a month. The top fifth averaged Sh183,000. One man cleared Sh400,000.

Those are not small numbers, and they are not the numbers most Kenyans expect. The picture in the national imagination is a rider in a reflective jacket dodging matatus on Ngong Road, or a young woman in a Kisumu bedsitter bidding for a $15 writing job at 2am. Both are real. What the Ipsos research adds is scale: this is no longer a side hustle culture. It is roughly 5 to 6 per cent of the country’s labour force and, by the report’s own estimate, close to 5 per cent of GDP.

The study surveyed 250 respondents in Kenya at a 95 per cent confidence level, over about three months, combining secondary data, focus groups and stakeholder interviews. It was commissioned by Bolt — worth stating plainly, since Bolt is a participant in the market it is measuring — and launched on 19 March 2026.

What the Kenya gig economy is actually made of

Ask most people to define gig work and they will say motorbikes. The data says otherwise. The report breaks the Kenya gig economy into five segments:

• E-commerce — 42 per cent
• Ride-hailing — 20 per cent
• Freelancing — 17 per cent
• Micro-tasks — 10 per cent
• Remote work — 9 per cent

E-commerce dwarfs everything. That is the vendor packing orders in Nyamakima, the woman selling shapewear on Instagram and paying a rider Sh200 to run it to Buruburu, the fulfilment agent who never meets a customer. Ride-hailing is the visible fifth. Freelancing — the writers, designers, virtual assistants and data annotators working for clients they will never meet — is a solid seventeen.

Kenya’s digital platform count grew from 11 in 2015 to more than 40 today. Bolt alone says it works with over 50,000 drivers and courier partners in the country.

The money is real. So is the volatility.

The headline earnings deserve context. Sh63,000 is a gross monthly average for Bolt drivers — before fuel, before the commission, before the car loan, before the Sh1,500 day a puncture costs you. The report recorded income volatility of 62 per cent across the study. And it is not evenly distributed: two-wheel operators averaged around Sh6,000 a month, a figure that sits uncomfortably beside the Sh400,000 top earner.

“What really determines the earning is the number of hours you’re willing to put in, the quality of you as a driver, and also the category,” Dimmy Kanyankole, Bolt’s Senior General Manager for East Africa, told the launch panel. In a sector with no sick pay, hours are the only lever a worker controls.

Still, 53 per cent of ride-hailing respondents said the platform was their primary source of income — higher, Bolt says, than in Nigeria or South Africa. Ninety-eight per cent reported some improvement in living standards; 54 per cent called it significant. “Platform-based work is shaping employment, income resilience, and economic opportunity in Kenya,” said Soyinka Witness, Strategy Director at Ipsos.

Kenneth Anye, Bolt’s Director for Public Policy for Africa and Latin America, framed the spillover: “It creates a lot of financial opportunities. It has a bigger impact beyond just the drivers themselves.”

Who is missing from the Kenya gig economy

Ninety-seven per cent of ride-hailing drivers in the survey are men. Three per cent are women. Bolt has launched a women-for-women driver category to address safety concerns, but the gap is the single starkest number in the whole report — an entire economy of 1.5 million people with one gender almost absent from its most visible segment.

Rising fuel prices remain the standing complaint; the report notes Bolt raised prices 6 per cent as a temporary measure and is pushing electric two-wheelers to cut running costs. Regulatory questions on driver welfare, insurance and taxation are still open as Kenya builds its platform-work framework.

Event work sits inside this same economy and rarely gets counted — the sound crews, ushers, photographers and stage hands who assemble a concert in a day and disperse by morning, paid per gig like everyone else here. Organisers running those events handle ticketing through platforms such as ulizaticket.com, and the people working the door are gig workers by any definition the report uses.

One number to treat carefully

A widely shared social media post put the Kenya gig economy at Sh133 billion. No outlet or report we reviewed published that figure. The research states $1.03 billion; The Star rendered it as Sh129 billion. Sh133 billion is a plausible conversion at a different rate, but it is not a published number.

Related reading on ULIZA LINKS: How Kenyan Gospel Artists Actually Earn In 2026 and NYOTA Fund Payout Triggers Youth Protests in Kisii.

Sources: The Kenya Times — Bolt & Ipsos Gig Economy Report 2026 | The Star — How Bolt helps in shaping Kenya’s gig economy | TechTrends KE — Bolt Kenya Gig Economy Report