Employment in Kenya’s postal and courier business is heavily skewed towards men, whose numbers have been more than double that of women since 2020, according to the Communications Authority of Kenya’s (CA) Q4 statistics.
- •According to the CA statistics, courier operators employed 3, 754 people, 2, 843 men and 731 women, by the end of June 2024.
- •In June 2023, the industry had a total 3,418 employees and the number of male employees stood at 2,696 compared to 722 women.
- •There was a spike in the number of employees in 2021 in the five-year period from 2020 to 2024 with the workforce hitting 4,706.
The workforce was still tilted toward men, with a headcount of 3, 599, compared to just 1, 107 women. In 2020, there were 583 female employees compared to male number of 1,669 in a year where the total count was at 2,252.
“There was a general increase in domestic and international courier traffic during the fourth quarter of 2024. The volume of outgoing local letters and parcels grew from 373,293 and 1.8 million to 415,818 and 1.9 million respectively. Additionally, the number of international outgoing and incoming letters increased from 263,522 and 86,227 to 392,931 and 102,494, respectively during the quarter under review,” says the regulator.
“The total revenues realized by private courier operators through national and international courier services grew by 12.1 percent in 2023 to KES. 6.22 billion.”