AGPO — Kenya's 30% Public-Procurement Set-Aside for Women-, Youth- and Disability-Owned Firms

The Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) programme, launched by Kenya's national government in 2013 under the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, reserves at least 30% of government procurement spend for micro and small enterprises owned by women, youth, and persons with disabilities, who can register for a free AGPO certificate through the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority.
Independent assessments show the target has not been met. A review of contracts worth 5 million Kenyan shillings or more found only 7.71% of that reserved share went to AGPO-registered firms between 2013 and 2016; a later academic analysis of procurement data from FY2015/16 to FY2022/23 put cumulative uptake by the combined women/youth/PWD group at 16.84% of total government procurement — roughly half the legal target sustained over nearly a decade. At the entity level, results vary: state utility KenGen has registered 5,743 AGPO suppliers, of which 17% are women-owned, and Kenya Power's AGPO contract value rose from KES 614 million to KES 3.5 billion between the years ending June 2024 and June 2025.
The programme has real institutional weight — a statutory set-aside, a dedicated certification body, and a decade of tracked procurement data — but the persistent, multi-year gap between its 30% target and single-digit-to-teens actual uptake is a documented and unresolved implementation shortfall, not a design success. It illustrates how a well-intentioned quota can under-deliver without complementary measures — bid-bond relief, capacity building, and enforcement — to make the reservation usable in practice.

Read the full analysis: https://agpo.go.ke/