Complementarity and Returns to Public and Private Capital for Microenterprises in Kibera, Nairobi

Project by Anna Tompsett
A ‘spine road’ is being constructed in Kibera, a large informal
settlement in the center of Nairobi. The road will vastly improve
transport access to the settlement. My proposed research project will
track a panel of microenterprises along the proposed route of the
road. The microenterprises will be incentivised to participate in the survey
with the opportunity to participate in a small grant lottery. We will
carefully track those businesses that exit the market (using mobile
phones and social networks) and those that enter the market as a
result. The resultant data will allow us to estimate the ‘return’ on
the investments in public capital (the road) and private capital (the
small grants), the distribution of those impacts, and, critically, to
determine whether the two interventions have a complementary effect.
The research outputs will contribute to the debate on how to achieve
sustainable economic development in informal settlements, the role of
infrastructure improvements, and the importance of integrated approaches
to intervention design.