Market Assessment

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) are abundant in Kenya comprising eighty percent of businesses, but their contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) remains limited. Increasing MSME productivity will drive economic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic over the short term, and has the potential to unleash sustained economic growth in time. However, MSME productivity remains constrained by numerous barriers including insufficient access to finance. Scaling supply chain finance (SCF) has the potential to expand access to financing for MSMEs, particularly small and medium sized enterprises in well-integrated supply chains. This IFC assessment...

This paper presents results from the first randomization of a regulatory reform in the health sector. The reform established minimum quality standards for patient safety, an issue that has become increasingly salient following the Ebola and COVID-19 epidemics. In the experiment, all 1,348 health facilities in three Kenyan counties were classified into 273 markets, and the markets were then randomly allocated to treatment and control groups. Government inspectors visited health facilities and, depending on the results of their inspection, recommended closure or a timeline for improvements. The intervention increased compliance with patient safety measures in...

In 2022 sales of solar energy kits reached a record breaking 9.5 million units, almost one million more than the 8.5 million units sold in 2019 demonstrating a bounce-back from COVID. Industry leaders in particular have contributed to the growth in sales needed to achieve this. Successful programmatic support, notably result-based finance schemes, have also been a key enabling factor. Finally, new companies joining the data collection contributed to a limited extent to the jump in sales compared to the previous reporting round. TV, refrigeration unit and solar water pump sales all grew compared to the first half of the...

This report shows that 2019 was a record-breaking year for our sector. It reinforces off-grid solar as a major part of the solution to bring modern energy into off-grid households to power light and appliances in the most remote areas around the world. Over 8.5 million off-grid solar lighting products and 1.2 million off-grid solar appliances were sold in 2019 by a growing number of companies participating in this data collection...

The energy sector is a crucial enabler to economic growth in many countries. Consequently, there are a number of private firms, governments and development partners who are heavily investing huge amounts of money on energy projects. Due to the nature of these projects, few foreign firms have the requisite resources and technical capacity to handle mega energy investments. In most cases, local firms lack capacity to undertake the projects. Additionally, as countries exploit resources they have, they are mindful of the gains the local communities would accrue from energy projects in terms of skills and technology transfer, employment and building...