Kenya Women

Nairobi is where the women's game in Kenya took root, and it did so away from the national stadiums — on the pitches of Eastlands, where Habil Nanjero put together a team in the mid-1980s, and later in Kibera and Mathare, where the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy and the Mathare Youth Sports Association turned street football into something with fixtures and coaching. The players who came through those neighbourhoods eventually filled the shirt that appeared in 1993.

The Harambee Starlets play at the Nyayo National Stadium, though the bigger nights move a few kilometres north to the Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani, which holds 48,063 after its renovation.

Doreen Nabwire — Dodo to almost everyone — captained the side and in 2009 became the first Kenyan woman to sign professionally in Europe, at Werder Bremen. She came back into the game from the other side, as the Football Kenya Federation's Women's Football Development Officer, which means the pathway she opened is now partly her job to maintain. Her sister Christine Nafula also played for the team.

Nothing has come easy at continental level. Kenya have reached the group stage of the Africa Women Cup of Nations twice, in 2016 and 2026, and gone no further. The regional tournament has been kinder and crueller in equal measure: fourth in the 2019 Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (CECAFA) Women's Championship they got over the line to the final and lost it 2–0 to Tanzania, then finished runners-up again in 2025.

Uganda remain the fixture that carries most, a rivalry that runs back to the Gossage Cup years and has never needed a nickname to be understood in Nairobi.