The scale of the adoption gap becomes clear at the level of individual schemes. Kenya has just over 1,032 active registered pension schemes (RBA, 2025) — from large national funds to small employer-sponsored plans — and by industry estimates, fewer than one in twenty holds any allocation to alternative assets at all.

The KES 29.93 billion currently invested in private equity is therefore not the industry wading in cautiously; it is a small number of schemes participating while the vast majority remain entirely outside the space.

The reasons practitioners cite are less about conviction than familiarity: trustees are unfamiliar with how the asset class works, service providers rarely present it, and few schemes have peers to learn from. For the schemes that have made allocations, this has meant navigating largely without precedent — and for the industry, it means most of the movement toward alternatives is still ahead.