Kenya online in 2026: 23.4 million connected, and most of the country still to come
Kenya has more smartphones and mobile-money accounts than ever, yet fewer than half of Kenyans use the internet. Here is what the numbers say.
At the start of the 2026 reporting year, 23.4 million Kenyans used the internet: 40.5% of a population of 57.8 million. That figure grew by 2.1 million people, or 9.9%, in twelve months.
Put the other way round, roughly six in ten Kenyans were still offline. That is the single most important number for anyone building a business, a service or a policy online: the next wave of users has not arrived yet.
Phones are everywhere, the internet is catching up
Communications Authority figures for December 2025 count 48.7 million smartphones in use and 51.4 million mobile-money subscriptions. These count devices and SIM subscriptions, not people, so one person can appear more than once. Still, they show that the hardware and the payment rails are in place long before everyone is online.
Where Kenyans spend attention
Social media reach grew faster than internet use itself, to 18.4 million user identities. TikTok reached 18.4 million adults and Facebook 17.0 million, ahead of YouTube at 12.1 million. See the full picture on our Kenya in Numbers page.
Why it matters
- Mobile first, always. Almost every new user arrives on a phone and pays for data, so light pages and short videos win.
- Payments are ready. With mobile money nearly universal, paying for a service online is not the barrier. Trust and value are.
- The opportunity is ahead. The country with the most mobile-money users per person in the region still has most of its population to bring online.
