As we trudged through Kivani Secondary School’s third term student attendance records, one absenteeism after another greeted us. Per our analysis in preparation for Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with selected parents and guardians at the school, the average student missed about 13% of class time. I didn’t give it much thought then.

Kenya’s annual financial inclusion lecture sets out how to protect consumers and drive growth in financial services

Rafe Mazer was the speaker at the 2nd FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion. His presentation shared how we can develop our own “test and learn” – the way in which financial service providers and regulators collaborate to allow for new solutions – for consumer protection.

The research is based on a long-term series of five surveys undertaken on M-Pesa in Kenya supported by FSD Kenya and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Policymakers, academics, industry players, donors and other stakeholders gathered at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Thursday 8th December for the 2nd FSD Kenya annual lecture on financial inclusion.

The financial services sector’s attitude towards small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), is changing. SMEs form a significant part of the potential finance market in most countries, including Kenya.

This year, the price of a kilo of tea reached a five-year high. Every October, tea farmers in Kenya receive a “tea bonus”; the second lump sum payment for tea delivered to the Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) during the year. The first lump sum, the “mini bonus”, is paid each April.

Meet Najiri: One of the target recipients for FSD Kenya’s new graduation programme.

The sun is bright in Marsabit, the kind of bright that sears anything its rays touch. There isn’t much rain here, most parts of the county are arid.

The telecom sector in Kenya has experienced phenomenal growth over the past decade. Mobile phone penetration has topped 90%, with 78% of Kenyan adults now owning a working mobile phone.

M-Shwari (meaning ‘calm’ in Kiswahili) is a combined savings and loans product launched through a collabo­ration between the Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) and Safaricom.

One of the key reasons why banks are challenged in serving SMEs appropriately, is that they lack an understanding of the evolving needs of fast growing SMEs.

How exactly do financial services impact low income Kenyans? In this note, we extract the stories of eight respondent households from the Financial Diaries.

This is the second post in a three-post blog series introducing publications from our recently concluded Kenya Financial Diaries update study, conducted with BFA.

Self-employment is a major source of income for low income Kenyans, and Financial Diaries respondents are no exception. When we talked to respondents in 2015, two years after the close of the original Diaries, those whose economic lives were improving pointed to business returns as one of the main drivers of their success.

Credit information sharing arrangements (‘CIS’) have emerged worldwide as an effective mechanism to improve access to credit by reducing information asymmetry between borrowers and lenders and improving the quality of credit assessments made by lenders. Since 2009, Credit Information Sharing Association of Kenya (‘CIS Kenya’) has been developing the system of credit information sharing in Kenya.

Our third “Field Friday” exercise reveals lessons for formal financial service providers to learn from informal services.

Over the next three weeks, we will be releasing three publications based on findings from the Kenya Financial Diaries Update, a follow up study with the Kenya Financial Diaries households.

In late 2015, we followed up with Financial Diaries households to check in on their economic lives two years after the initial Diaries study ended. We wanted to know how they are doing now, the factors driving changes in their economic lives, and the role that financial services and financial choices were playing in their economic trajectories.

While both Kenya and Tanzania registered fast uptake of digital credit, a new study by FSD Kenya and CGAP with almost 8000 individuals found considerable differences as well as similarities in the adoption and use of digital credit in the two countries.

How the use of non-financial services can help bankers deliver effective financing.

Poor communication between entrepreneurs and their bankers is often a stumbling block in the delivery of effective financing for enterprise growth throughout the world. The use of non-financial services (NFS) can help with this.

This report draws on Financial Diaries data from India, Kenya, and Mexico to enhance the field’s understanding of women’s financial lives, and to highlight provider-led opportunities to better serve this important market segment.

Can digital innovations replicate the “three-padlock” concept of the money box?

Financial institutions play a key role in enhancing trust in the financial system

Enthusiasm around the once-popular “Africa Rising” narrative is abating in the face of slower-than-expected growth, macro volatility deriving from continued reliance on raw material exports in many countries, and the reality of persistently high inequality.

23% of sub-Saharan Africans are living in “cusper” households that get by on $2-$5 per person per day. This map shows their total percentage per country (relative to the overall country population) and size in millions

Why residents of Kawangware welcome the interest rate cap

Beneath the surface of many of the disruptive applications we use everyday is a growing web of APIs – application program interfaces that enable applications to “talk” to one another.

To increase access to finance in the agricultural sector, various players have implemented initiatives to help smallholder farmers and pastoralists to access financial solutions. The many initiatives over time have had varying degrees of success.

This toolkit has been designed to help you generate solutions in many different fields of interest, from agriculture, to manufacturing, to banking and new technology.

Kenya is seen widely as a ‘stand out’ success story on financial inclusion. The ten-year period from 2005 to 2015 witnessed enormous change in the financial sector.