Career

From Eldoret to Global SaaS: The Career Path I Wish Someone Had Drawn for Me

By Felix Maru · April 13, 2026 · 8 min read

I graduated with a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Eldoret in 2015, and I spent the next three years wondering whether the global tech industry actually had room for someone like me.

Nairobi, Kenya. A local job market that was growing but small. Zero personal network overseas. Plenty of well-meaning opinions from people who had never worked internationally.

Eleven years later, I work with teams in a dozen countries without having left Kenya, and I do it on my own schedule. The path was not what my university prospectus suggested it would be, and nobody drew it for me in advance. This is the blog I wish I'd found when I was 22 — five things that would have saved me three years of wondering.

1. Certifications Open Doors a Degree Doesn't

My BSc got respectful nods in interviews. It did not get me interviews.

What did: my ITIL Foundation certificate and my CompTIA A+ and, later, my Google IT Support certificate. Not because those qualifications are objectively "better" than a Computer Science degree — they obviously aren't. It's simpler than that: they're globally legible.

A hiring manager in Austin or Amsterdam has no mental frame for "University of Eldoret." They absolutely have a frame for ITIL. When your CV crosses an ocean, certifications act as translation — they let someone half a world away place your skills on a map they already know how to read.

This isn't a knock on the university system. It's just a reality about how global hiring filters work. If I were starting out today in Nairobi, Lagos, Accra, or Cairo, I'd spend my first year stacking:

All three cost less than $500 combined if you plan it right. That's the cheapest career accelerator I know of for anyone starting from a country whose universities aren't brand names in the West.

2. Remote Work Changed Everything — But Only for the Ready

Working for a US-based SaaS company from Nairobi is routine in 2026. The payment rails work. The tools work. The bias that used to make hiring managers say "but they're not in the office" has softened dramatically.

The catch is that remote work doesn't eliminate distance. It demands that you manage it. And the skills that make you good at distance aren't taught in any CS programme I've seen.

The things that actually matter on a distributed team:

These aren't soft skills. They're survival skills for distributed teams. They're also competitive advantages against colleagues who haven't learned them yet.

3. Solve a Real Problem, Then Talk About It

Every job I've gotten — from ICT Assistant to ICT Officer to SaaS Ops to automation — came from being able to point at a specific, provable result.

Not: "I'm good at IT support."

But: "I cut helpdesk ticket volume by 43% at Hand in Hand by automating password resets and building a self-service KB."

Resumes with numbers get callbacks. Resumes without numbers get filed.

Practically, this means three habits:

  1. Document projects while you're doing them, not after. Your future self will forget the metrics. Capture them in real time.
  2. Measure before, measure after. Even rough numbers are better than none. "Tickets per week dropped from ~40 to ~22" beats "improved ticket throughput."
  3. Publish something. A LinkedIn post, a blog entry, a slide — a public artefact compounds far more than a private resume bullet. And by the time you're interviewing, you have receipts.

4. The Global Market Is More Open Than It Looks from Here

There's a stubborn belief in Nairobi — I had it too — that you have to leave the continent to work globally. That belief is out of date.

What's changed in the last five years:

What hasn't changed:

None of that has anything to do with your postcode. All of it is something you control.

5. Your Geography Is an Asset, Not a Liability

The lesson that took me the longest to internalise: being from Kenya is not dilution. It's differentiation.

Coming from here means I've shipped solutions at bandwidth levels most engineers in stable-broadband environments never encounter. I've architected for intermittent connectivity because I had to. I've built support processes for users with wildly varied tech literacy because every project demanded it. I can reason about pricing for emerging markets because I live in one.

Those are hire-able skills. They're rarely on a Western CS graduate's resume. They're absolutely on mine.

Lean into what's particular to where you're from. The experiences you have access to that others don't are an edge, not a handicap. The goal is never to apologise for your context or to pretend you grew up somewhere else. The goal is to be the person who brings a perspective the rest of the team literally cannot.

Advice to My Younger Self

If I could send a letter back to 2015-me, standing at graduation wondering if any of this would add up to a career, it would say roughly this:

Get the certs in the first year. Learn to write clearly. Keep a log of everything you build and every number you move. Work on hard problems in places nobody's watching — they'll compound quietly. Don't wait for permission to call yourself a professional. The path isn't what the degree promised, but it's better than what you were promised. Be patient, be visible, and ship.

If You're Starting Out

If you're early in your ICT career anywhere on the continent, the global market is more open to you than it has ever been. Build the skills. Stack the certifications. Ship real work. Document your wins publicly. Be the professional your future team needs.

The industry has room for you. The path exists. Walk it deliberately.

If this resonated, reach out — I'd love to hear your version of the story, and I'm always happy to compare notes with anyone building an international career from Africa.

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