The Wrong Instrument: Why Fertilizer Subsidies Have Not Closed Kenya's Maize Yield Gap
Kenya has subsidized fertilizer in some form since 2008, spending KSh 31 billion through 2018 on the NCPB scheme alone, and in 2022 launched the National Fertiliser Subsidy Programme (NFSP), open to all registered farmers with quantities tied to registered landholding.
Borrowing Once a Day: Digital Credit, Repayment Velocity and the Limits of the Debt-Trap Framing in Kenya
Kenya's digital credit market has reached a scale that makes the usual framing of the debate, is a digital loan good or bad for the borrower?, close to unanswerable as posed.
Education-to-Employment Mismatch: Why Rising School Enrollment Hasn’t Translated into Kenyan Wage Growth
While Kenya increased enrollment in primary and secondary schools significantly via free education policies implemented in 2003 and 2008, the wage premium for exactly that level of education has dramatically declined during the same period, according to Mincerian estimates, the wage premium for…
Agricultural Cooperatives and Price Bargaining Power: Do Farmer Collectives Improve Smallholder Income in Kenya?
Indeed, the history of agriculture cooperative development in Kenya is amongst the longest and most extensive in all of Africa, and the results on whether or not cooperatives improve smallholders' income are really ambiguous in the context of this specific country, not just overall.
Electricity Reliability and Firm Productivity: A Microeconomic Look at Power Rationing’s Cost to Kenyan SMEs
Kenyan businesses have been found to incur an average loss of about 4% of their yearly sales due to blackouts, and 66% now either have or share access to a generator, signaling a form of quiet self-insurance by the private sector against a missing piece of infrastructure.
Youth Entrepreneurship and Capital Constraints: Why Kenyan Startups Struggle to Scale Past the Micro Stage
The contradiction inherent in Kenya’s startup ecosystem is thus: Kenya has seen a historic influx of USD 984 million worth of venture capital in a particular year, and yet an estimated 60% of youth-led MSMEs fail within the first three years, and 68% of SMEs in Kenya continue to fund themselves…
The Cost of Being Poor: Price Discrimination and Transaction Costs in Nairobi’s Informal Markets
The existence of the “poverty premium”, the notion that poor households pay more for the same goods and services as wealthy households do, has been noted in Kenya’s housing, water and retail markets.
Remittances vs. Aid: Comparing Household-Level Growth Effects in Kenyan Diaspora-Linked vs. NGO-Dependent Communities
Kenya received diaspora remittances estimated at USD 4.4-4.8 billion in 2024, which is more than double its official development assistance (ODA) amounting to USD 2.6 billion in 2023 and continuing to grow as international aid budgets dwindle.
Chama Networks: Informal Savings Groups as Substitutes for Formal Banking in Rural Kenya
However, the rotating and accumulative savings and credit associations, popularly called chamas in local parlance, continue to be one of the largest informal financial mechanisms in the world in relation to their economic size, intermediating an estimated KSh 60 billion (or around USD 860 million)…
Land Title Ambiguity and Underinvestment: A Microeconomic Case Study of Smallholder Farmers in Central and Western Kenya
Under the de Soto thesis, there should be a clear cause-and-effect relationship where formal titling leads to enforceable collateral, which then enables formal lending, which provides finance for investments that improve productivity.
The Boda Boda Economy: Informal Transport as a Microeconomic Buffer Against Youth Unemployment
An estimated one million people find work directly through boda bodas in Kenya, and the workforce in this industry is disproportionately composed of young and male workers who are excluded from formal employment opportunities.
Mobile Money and the Missing Middle: Does M-Pesa Access Correlate with SME Formalization in Kenya?
Kenya is the country of reference when it comes to mobile money services, with M-Pesa usage being very prevalent in the country.