Linkages, Access to Finance and the Performance of Small-Scale Enterprises in Kenya

Micro- and small-scale enterprises (MSEs) have become important players in the Kenyan economy, but at the same time they continue to face constraints that limit their development. Lack of access to financial services is one of the main constraints, and a number of factors have been identified to explain this problem. These include the segmented and incomplete nature of financial markets, which increases transaction costs associated with financial services. On the supply side, most formal financial institutions consider MSEs uncreditworthy, thus denying them credit. Lack of access to financial resources has been seen as one of the reasons for the slow growth of firms. Literature from the new institutional economics, however, shows that institutional arrangements, like linkages and networks between firms, provide an important avenue through which firms can overcome some of these constraints.linkages, finance, enterprise performance

Female participation in the labour market : the case of the informal sector in Kenya

The informal sector has become increasingly important as a source of income and employment in Kenya. This contrasts with the declining performance of the formal sector, and underscores the sector's potential for absorbing the country's increasing labour force as more households become dependent on it. One important attribute of the sector is that it has become a major employer of the female labour force in the country. This study investigated the factors determining the participation of women in informal sector activities given a range of other available labour market options. The results show that education is one of the important factors determining women's participation in the different categories of the labour market. The study concludes that efforts to address the problem of women's access to the labour market should focus on improving their access to education as one of the important factors for improving their human capital. Given the nature of the informal sector, and the fact that access to the labour market is an outcome of the interaction between demand and supply, addressing female participation in the sector may require addressing the demand side of the Kenyan labour market in addition to the factors expected to explain labour market participation

Research Paper No. 2009/06 Linkages, Access to Finance and the Performance of Small-Scale Enterprises in Kenya

Micro- and small-scale enterprises (MSEs) have become important players in the Kenyan economy, but at the same time they continue to face constraints that limit their development. Lack of access to financial services is one of the main constraints, and a number of factors have been identified to explain this problem. These include the segmented and incomplete nature of financial markets, which increases transaction costs associated with financial services. On the supply side, most formal financial institutions consider MSEs uncreditworthy, thus denying them credit. Lack of access to financial resources has been seen as one of the reasons for the slow growth of firms. Literature from the new institutional economics, however, shows that institutional arrangements, like linkages and networks between firms, provide an important avenue through which firms can overcome some of these constraints. Therefore, the question that arises is

Influence of Preservice Teacher Learning on the Application of Laboratory Experiment Teaching Method

This paper sought to establish the influence of Laboratory Experiment Teaching Method on the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) Science students’ performance during teaching practice. The sample comprising 107 B.Ed Science students, their respective Head of Subjects, and the three faculty provided the study data through questionnaires, interview schedules and the teaching practice assessment form. The data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially. The study concluded that (i) the Laboratory Experiment Teaching Method as taught in the university-based subject Methods Course and applied by the B.Ed Science students on TP is limited. (ii) The HoS can be an important school-based resource for provision of technical support (iii) the classroom is a potential context for learning to apply as well as hone the Laboratory Experiment Teaching Method. The study recommended that (i) technical support be enhanced to further adoption of and hone the instructional practices found ‘difficult’ or superficially developed (ii) Lobby for a structured supervision partnership with the HoS (ii) faculty tu design a portfolio of learning experiences on application of the Laboratory Experiment Teaching Method that relate to the individual and context-specific needs, and use the data to improve the B.Ed Science students’ experiential learning both at the university and at the school-based teaching practice experiences. Keywords:  Laboratory experiment, teaching practice, competency, performance DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-18-15 Publication date:June 30th 201

Gender, Education and Occupational Outcomes: Kenya’s Informal Sector in the 1990s.

In this paper we examine the consequences of the increasing informalisation of the Kenyan economy in the 1990s for the gender gap in occupational outcomes. We use a labour force survey for Kenya undertaken at the end of the 1990s to ask whether education acts to increase women's labour force participation and how both education and experience impact on the choices across the formal and informal sectors. We find that while labour force participation does rise with education it was higher for women than for men at the end of the 1990s. There are major differences between the public and formal private sectors. At very high levels of education women are more likely than men to have a public sector job. In contrast for the private formal sector, while education does raise the probability of having such a job, the gap between women and men widens as educational levels increase. At eight years of education, the end of primary school in Kenya, women are 10 percentage points less likely to have an informal private sector job than are men and are 22 percentage points more likely to be an unpaid family worker. Clearly an expansion of private sector activity will not lessen the gender gap unless this pattern is altered. We have no evidence that the gap between men and women falls as length in the workforce increases. Indeed in what we think is the most important category for explaining poor female labour market outcomes, unpaid family labour, the gap widens substantially over 10 to 20 years of work experience