Blog

Laisamis is a settlement in Marsabit County in the Northern part of Kenya towards the Ethiopian border.

In this series of mini-interviews, researchers and respondents in the Kenya Financial Diaries reflect on their experiences. 

Parents across Kenya are receiving ambiguous messages about the timing of school re-openings amid the coronavirus outbreak.

On the morning of November 3rd, 2020, I was honoured to be part of the launch of the Year of Climate Action in Kenya (#YoCaKenya).

The year 2020 will undoubtedly go down in history as the point in time when COVID-19 paralysed the world.

Between 7 September and 14 October, our team spoke with 207 participants from the Kenya Financial Diaries, tracing the ways COVID-19 was impacting their lives.

As we completed a new round of COVID-19 Diaries interviews in mid-October, we noticed a shift in the story of economic hardship.

On average, families in the Kenya Financial Diaries started to see improvements in their economic situation as of October 2020, but incomes are still far from normal.

Below, we’ll discuss the power of frameworks in shaping research and providing insights for financial inclusion policy and investment.

Why is agricultural sector the least funded sector in Kenya by the formal financial sources despite being the largest sector in terms of GDP contribution (at over 50% GDP contribution directly and indirectly)?

The Covid-19 pandemic is throwing a curved ball at us. It has made planning virtually impossible.

After several years of “hustling,” my friend Njoroge saved money enough to construct his own little fruit shack in the Hurlingham suburb of Nairobi.

In mid-July we interviewed a subset of FSD Kenya/CARE’s Building Livelihoods programme beneficiaries in Northern Kenya to understand the extent to which resources built up through the programme are supporting resilience of beneficiary households during COVID-19, and how these compare and interact with traditional pastoralist coping mechanisms.

“Things are getting bad,” Vanessa told us. When we spoke with her in late June, her family had just about run out of food and were waiting for the next harvest.

As COVID-19 continues to ravage economies across the world, a key point of emerging macroeconomic focus is its variated impact at sectoral level.

They were making only about Ksh 4,000 per month (about $40) the last time we saw them in 2015.

How Kenyan mothers are keeping food on the table through the coronavirus crisis

As the world reels from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a key lesson it has taught us is the universality of our vulnerability.

The economic fallout engendered by COVID-19 has already been dire with many going without food and/or accruing different types of debt to stay afloat.

Over the past four years, FSD Kenya’s Building Livelihoods programme in Northern Kenya has explored how extremely poor households can be transitioned out of poverty and into sustainable livelihoods through stronger engagements with markets.

The agricultural sector in Africa is yet to take off despite being the dominant employer and the key contributor to the gross domestic product (GDP) for most countries on the continent.

FSD Kenya and BFA Global held a webinar on the economic and social impact of COVID-19 on low-income households in Kenya on the afternoon of Thursday, June 11th, 2020.

Desperate for income, many Diaries respondents have gone back to work, but find it nearly impossible to earn a living.

A little over a month ago, we confirmed an exciting hypothesis  that it is actually possible to predict the propensity of success for Kenyan “hustlers” based on data mining and qualitative research

This is clearly an unprecedented time. Over the past few months, the world has been battling the COVID-19 pandemic which has seen health systems burdened and unable to cope with the rising numbers of infected people.

The infection rate of COVID-19 is as yet low in Kenya, but the economic consequences are already biting.

In 2018, Kenya’s Ministry of Labour and Social Protection launched the newest phase of its social safety net programme Inua Jamii with an audacious goal: provide all beneficiaries with a full bank account and offer them a choice among four financial services providers.

Vera (45) lives in an informal settlement in Mombasa.  Usually it is just her at home these days.

A big question amidst the current COVID-19 has been, how are community-based finance models fairing?

The recent months have been quite surreal for many across the globe.