PROFILE: Mercy Kimaku - The Kenyan girl keeping Africa safe on TikTok

There’s a quiet kind of magic in Mercy Kimaku’s story, the kind that begins in a small town in Nakuru with an old computer that took five minutes to boot and ends up at the helm of TikTok’s digital safety efforts for nearly an entire continent.

She’s the Kenyan girl who dared to ask the big questions at a very young age: Who built this? Why does it work? And how do I get in? Now, Mercy wears the title of Regional Risk Prevention Lead at TikTok, overseeing trust and safety efforts across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Citizen Digital’s IAN OMONDI caught up with Mercy on the sidelines of the TikTok Digital Well-being Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa - a fitting setting, really, for a conversation about safety, purpose, and raising children in the age of pixels and scrolls. Between power panels and policy chats, she spoke with a rare blend of tech savviness, maternal tenderness, and what you might call holy mischief; the kind that dares to change systems while laughing at life’s little ironies.

What stands out most about Mercy isn’t just her resume - and it’s impressive: Oracle, Meta, now TikTok - but rather the conviction with which she speaks of home, of legacy, of raising a daughter who knows she can code and play the drums if she wants to. She’s deeply technical, but stubbornly human. A coder of systems, sure - but more importantly, a curator of values.

Mercy opened up about girlhood, growth, online nastiness, and what it means to build safety into the bones of a platform as wild and alive as TikTok.

How does a Kenyan girl get here?

That’s a very good question. I loved tech from the very beginning. I started off with a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Egerton University. But immediately after graduating, I realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. My passion had always been in technology.

So, I applied for a scholarship at Strathmore University, where I got the opportunity to pursue a Master’s degree in Telecommunications and Innovation. That’s where I really got into the tech world, building mobile applications and exploring various innovations.

Thankfully, after that, I joined Oracle. That company opened my mind to the possibilities in tech and cemented my love for the field. I stayed there for a couple of years before realizing that social media offered even more room for impact. So, I shot my shot at Meta.

I did my interviews with Meta while still in Kenya, and fortunately, everything worked out. Meta was kind enough to relocate me to Dublin, Ireland, where I worked on WhatsApp for two and a half years, still covering Africa, because my passion for the continent is deeply rooted.

Three years later, I decided to transition into Trust and Safety. While at WhatsApp, I saw a lot of risks in that space but didn’t have the opportunity to directly mitigate them. So, when TikTok came calling, I was more than happy to join. The last three years have been incredibly fulfilling.

So, Yes, it’s possible for a Kenyan girl to get here. Chase your dreams, don’t take "No" for an answer, keep looking for opportunities wherever they are, and feel free to connect with me if you want to chat about how to get into this space.

Take me back to your childhood for a minute, what is the most profound thing you remember about it?

I grew up in Nakuru, just a small girl in a small town. It was a beautiful experience. I had a fairly normal childhood with both parents present and three siblings. We had a comfortable home; we never lacked food or shelter. The basics were always covered.

But what really stands out for me is something my dad used to say: "I want you to dream. I want you to believe in that dream. And then I want you to tell God that dream."

We had a small shop on the side, and I remember my dad once installed a POS system there. We also had this old computer that took a full five minutes to boot up. When it finally did, it displayed a blue screen with lines of code. I remember being so fascinated and telling my dad that I wanted to understand what that code meant.

From an early age, I knew I wanted to get into tech. I wanted to understand how it all worked. Who designed it? Who made it possible to press a button and have a machine come to life?

My parents supported my curiosity. My dad especially was a big believer in girl power. He always said, "There’s nothing women can’t do." In primary school, he would look at my report card and the first thing he'd ask was how many girls were ahead of me. That mindset, that girls can do anything, stuck with me. I think that’s what even gave me the confidence to take on such a big role of ensuring safety for users across markets.

You have a three-year-old child now, how differently or similarly are you raising her compared to how you were raised?

One thing I’d love to carry over from my own upbringing is encouraging her to believe that anything is possible. I don’t want to be the kind of parent who forces their child into a specific career or interest. I want to observe what she’s passionate about and support her in pursuing that.

What I might do a little differently is allow her more room to experiment. As the first-born, I always felt like I had to get things right. I didn’t give myself the space to try and fail. I had to calculate every move for the sake of my siblings. But with my daughter, I want her to explore.

If she says she wants to do music, I’ll ask, "Which instrument?" and go get it. If it’s sports, I’ll say, "Go for it."

That said, I do have one personal goal: I want to teach her how to code by the time she turns five. As soon as she can type, I’ll introduce her to the basics. Even if she ends up doing something else, I want her to have that foundational tech skill, especially in a world increasingly shaped by AI.

You’re raising a child in an increasingly digital age, and being right in the middle of the sector yourself, at what age would you say you will put a mobile phone in your child’s hand?

[Laughs] Please don’t bash me for this. [Laughs again]

If I say 16 or 17, would that be fair?

I’d really love to wait until she’s around that age. Because, in Ireland, kids finish school at around age 16 or 17, and I think that’s when I can have a proper conversation with her about responsibility. The risks are real.

I want to give her a phone only when she’s mature enough to know what to say No to. I want her to be able to recognize problematic content and either switch it off or come talk to me about it. Being in this industry, I feel it's necessary to delay that exposure until she can handle it.

I imagine your role allows you to travel quite a bit, which means you interact with a lot of people, and you also have access to the backend of our social media activity. What have your travels and your job taught you about human behaviour? Do you think people are what they portray online?

Yes and No. What my travels have taught me is that people are incredibly diverse. But the one thing I’ve observed, which I don’t really appreciate, is how bold people can be online compared to in-person. People will leave nasty comments on your posts, but these are things they would never dare say to your face.

As somebody who works in risk, what is the riskiest thing you’ve ever done in your life?

[Laughs] I am so risk-averse. The closest thing to a risk I have done is snorkeling, but the moment we got deep into the sea, I changed my mind.

What would you say is the biggest risk facing TikTok in the continent? Is it the content, public perception, or government regulation?

TikTok is a fairly new platform and like with any new thing, we face challenges. With the rise of misinformation and disinformation across Africa, I would say content is one of our biggest risks.

However, through a combination of advanced technologies and rigorous moderation strategies, we proactively detect and review content that may violate our Community Guidelines, taking appropriate action against any violations, including content removal and account bans.

Additionally, we consult with a range of stakeholders to inform our human rights due diligence. Our Sub-Saharan (SSA) Safety Advisory Council brings together experts from across the region with a diverse range of backgrounds to work closely with us on developing policies and processes that tackle today’s safety concerns.

We continue to work collaboratively with various stakeholders to educate our public and stakeholders on safety and what needs to be done to ensure safety on the platform.

When you retire back home in the evening after a hard day at work, do you tell yourself that “I’m a successful person”? And what is your personal definition of success?

Perfect. I really love that question.

My definition of success is knowing that I’ve done my best with the opportunities I have. At the end of each day, I ask myself: Did I connect with my family the way I needed to? Especially now, with a young baby. Someone once told me something that really stuck with me: "Your kid won’t remember the gifts, but they’ll remember the time you spent with them."

So I always ask: Did I give my daughter enough time? Even ten minutes of uninterrupted play, making her laugh, that’s enough for me.

Family is core for me. My husband, siblings, mum, friends - if I can say I connected with them meaningfully, that’s success.

Another thing is fulfilling my dreams. I believe in setting goals. Any time I achieve something - big or small - that’s a win for me. One of my goals this year was to really represent TikTok publicly and talk about the work we do. For a long time, I stayed behind the scenes, and so you would never see me in such engagements. But our Communications team kept encouraging us to step forward and speak out more, and so here we are.

So, in short: creating time for the right people, being present where I need to be, and achieving my goals - that’s my definition of success.

At the end of the day, I’m also incredibly passionate about removing harmful content from the platform. I could do that for 24 hours straight. If I go to bed knowing that we took down bad content or flagged something that could improve our systems, that’s a good day.

Having worked at some of the biggest companies in the world, do you ever plan on coming back to serve your country?

[Laughs] I would really love to serve my country someday. But not yet. Not in the near future.