This paper investigates the relationship between location, agglomeration, access to credit, informality, and productivity across cities and industries in Cameroon.
... See More + Emphasizing the link between micro-foundations and the data, the paper develops and estimates a structural model of occupational choice in which heterogeneous agents choose between formal entrepreneurship, informal entrepreneurship, and non-entrepreneurial work. Their decision-making process is driven by institutional constraints such as entry costs, tax enforcement, and access to credit. The model predicts that agglomeration has a non-monotonic effect on formalization, and entrepreneurial profits increase with agglomeration effects. Estimating the model by the generalized method of moments, the paper finds that the returns to capital and labor are not uniform across sectors and cities. Manufacturing industries are highly constrained in capital and the elasticity of capital is higher in Yaoundé and Douala, whereas labor elasticity is higher in Kribi. Counterfactual simulations show that an increase in roads provision can have a substantial impact in terms of output, formalization, and productivity. A reduction in the current interest rate has a large and significant impact on formalization and no significant effect on business creation. Likewise, while the current tax rate is suboptimal for most cities, a tax reduction policy would have a much greater impact on formalization than on business creation. These effects differ substantially across cities and sectors, suggesting that those policy instruments could be implemented accordingly to support formalization and business creation.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8515 JUL 10, 2018
This report is a second assessment of the mLabs (mobile application labs) program following the 2014 assessment: Do mLabs Make a Difference? This second assessment focuses on essentially the same three questions as the first assessment.
... See More + In September 2016, the infoDev mLab program engaged Sonjara, Inc. to perform this rapid assessment in Armenia (mLab Eastern Europe, South Caucasus, and Central Asia), Kenya (m:lab East Africa), Senegal (CTIC/mLab West Africa), and South Africa (mLab Southern Africa). This second assessment is based on an examination and visits to each mLab, with more than 160 field interviews and facilitated focus group discussions. The team analyzed more than 70 mLab-supported companies, conducting in-depth interviews with 59 mLabs start-ups as well as with mLab staff, investors, comparable start-ups, customers, and others in the ecosystem. The team also performed a review of documents, data, and materials provided by the mLabs and companies, as well as collecting leading practices and background research from industry and stakeholder sources. The report findings show that, since their launch in 2010 and since the 2014 assessment, mLabs have coevolved with their ecosystems, both influencing and being influenced by rapidly changing environments, marked by increased involvement by the private sector in both incubation and investment, and the rapid changes and improvements in technology infrastructure. The mLabs’ impacts on start-ups, start-up customers and on the digital entrepreneurship infrastructure are discussed. Recommendations are given strengthening program management among other things.
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This report is an assessment of the relevance of the CodeBus Africa project from the perspective of local partners. CodeBus Africa organized beginner level computer programming workshops in collaboration with 15 African partners in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries in 2017.
... See More + The overall purpose of the project was to promote and inspire equal participation of girls and boys in technology education, to build local capacity for teaching student-centered beginner-level programming and to boost collaboration between Finnish and African innovators. The study considers the extent to which a short-term collaboration such as CodeBus Africa, along with its offering of basic technical bootcamps, is deemed useful and valuable by African technology hubs. The findings suggest that the outcomes the partners mostly valued were: extension of networks, adopting a new coding education program (Sonic Pi), developing a new student-centered teaching practice for technology education, public visibility, and organizational learning including tech education management and teacher training skills among the local partners’ staff. For designing a scalable technology training program, the study highlights the following findings and recommendations: the need to dedicate personnel to focus on the youth training program and pedagogical development, to include business model development as a core activity, to identify local and global organizations as funding partners, to develop a local partner network for implementation, and to continue collaborating with CodeBus partners - Finnish embassies, Nokia and World Bank.
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The development objective of the Industry and Entrepreneurship Project for Kenya is to increase innovation and productivity in select private sector firms.
... See More + It has three components. First component, strengthening the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem aims to improve the survival and growth rates of technology-enabled startups in Kenya through a stronger innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem and talent base; Second component, SME linkages and upgrading aims to strengthen the productivity and internal capabilities for innovation of Kenyan SMEs, so that they can better compete for local and international market opportunities. It will support SMEs in improving their managerial and technical skills and their use and access to technology, and contribute towards the creation of local content. This component will finance diagnostics and performance-based contracts to select SMEs; Third component, outreach, M&E, and project implementation support is to provide resources for: (a) communications to facilitate diffusion and replication of promising innovations, (b) monitoring and evaluation (M&E) analyses to ensure the implementation and sustainability of the Project’s activities, and (c) project implementation support, through the Project Implementation Unit (PIU). This component will finance the design and implementation of an overall Project communications strategy, and dissemination tools to inform stakeholders on the Project’s progress and facilitate replicability of early success stories.
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The objective of the Support for Women and Youth Entrepreneurship Project for Djibouti is to improve economic opportunities for targeted entrepreneurs.
... See More + The project has three components. 1. Building capacity of women and young entrepreneurs component will improve access to: (i) skills and business development trainings (by scaling and expanding the scope of the existing PROPEJA project), (ii) small-scale financing, and (iii) information and resources for entrepreneurs. 2. Improving access to services, finance, and competitive value chains for women and young entrepreneurs component will improve access to services and finance for women and young entrepreneurs through the improvement and expansion of ecosystem provider capacity, and through the activation of the PCG Fund and reinforcement of the CPEC microfinance network. The component will also provide technical assistance to help identify and develop competitive sectors and value chains and enable enterprises to better meet the needs of these new dynamic sectors. 3. Support for Project Implementation and Monitoring component will finance technical assistance, equipment, training and operating costs for the Center for Leadership and Entrepreneurship (CLE’s) team so that it can operate the following PIU functions: (a) institution building, (ii) project implementation, (iii) project monitoring, and (iv) and evaluation. This component will also support the CLE in the areas of accounting, budget management, procurement, and overall administrative functions.
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