At just 18 years old, Shani stepped into the food business after her mother’s passing. The responsibility of providing for eight children, both her own kids as well as her siblings, has turned Shani into a determined and resilient entrepreneur dedicated to both her family and her business.
This business is challenging. Increasing costs of raw materials, such as wheat flour and cooking oil, put growing pressure on Shani’s profit margins and reserves. She faces prejudice and arrogant customers too, who are mainly men engaged in casual labour and revellers who stay up late drinking and watching football.
Shani’s day begins at 6 am, and sometimes, she doesn’t stop until midnight. Business is about much more than financial security for Shani; it’s about nurturing and supporting her children and siblings, ensuring that they have the opportunities she never did. She dreams of sending her children to university and will persevere with her business to keep paying school fees until they get there.
The importance of the informal economy in Kenya cannot be overstated; it accounts for 24% of Kenya’s GDP and also employs five times more workers than the formal economy.
TRANSFORM has been working to understand the current realities and future possibilities for the millions of entrepreneurial Kenyans who hustle to sustain livelihoods across the informal economy (read more about the context of the work here).
Brink, Procol Africa, Busara, Laterite, Ideas Unplugged, and TRANSFORM have collaborated throughout to deliver this work, alongside hundreds of ecosystem actors and informal economy entrepreneurs.
These blogs offer an insight into the lives of some informal workers we spoke to over the course of the project, told through images.
