Joyce Apus is a witty mother of eight who entertains visitors with her unconventional love story. How she met the man of her dreams in Kalokol, a small fishing community by the shores of Lake Turkana.

“He was light skinned,” she says. “You can see I am quite dark. So, I thought the children would have a fair complexion.”

The building livelihoods programme is a modified financial graduation project that emphasises market-based programme components to increase cost-effectiveness and potential for scale. The aim of the programme is to help those living in extreme poverty build sustainable livelihoods through business to enable them to live above the ‘survival threshold’, whereby households can meet basic food needs without external assistance (Fitzgibbon & Cabot Venton, 2014).

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

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

“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.

This data pack contains several files (in .csv and .dta formats) with information collected about households and household members participating in the 2012-2013 Kenya Financial Diaries study.

Agnes, 45, lives in rural Makueni with her children and elderly parents.  She had once been married, but her husband proved an unreliable partner.

When we spoke with Benson in April, he was feeling optimistic about getting through the COVID-19 crisis unscathed.  He worked in a factory that manufactured paper products, and toilet tissue was in high demand.  He was sure he would keep his job.  In June, like many of our respondents, his outlook was gloomier.

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.

After three months of Covid-19 restrictions, Jennifer’s economic options have run out.  She is five months pregnant, and the baby’s father has blocked her calls.  She hasn’t been able to pay rent in three months and worries that she and her children are on the verge of eviction.

Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, FSD Kenya and BFA Global have been working to understand the human impacts—social, financial, and economic—by conducting qualitative phone interviews with previous respondents from the Kenya Financial Diaries.

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

The 2019 FinAccess household survey is the fifth in a series of surveys that measure drivers and usage of financial services in Kenya. The 2019 report was officially launched on April 3rd 2019.

FSD Kenya carries out research excursions across the country to obtain perspectives of ordinary Kenyans regarding finance, financial services and how the financial system has impacted their livelihoods.

In order to understand the take‐up, use, and impacts of M‐PESA in Kenya, US based Principal Investigators William Jack (Georgetown) and Tavneet Suri (MIT Sloan School of Management) conducted a set of five surveys across Kenya, starting in yearly between 2008 and 2011, with a fifth survey conducted in 2014 to look at the longer-term impacts of M-PESA.