GET Ahead Business Training Program Impact Evaluation 2013 - 2017: Baseline & Follow-up Surveys (Kenya)

Abstract

We conduct a randomized experiment in 157 rural markets in Kenya to test how business training (the International Labour Organization (ILO)'s Gender and Enterprise Together program) affects the profitability, growth and survival of female-owned businesses, and to evaluate whether any gains in profitability come at the expense of other business owners. We work with a large sample of 3,537 firms, and use a two-stage randomization, first randomizing at the market-level, and then randomizing the offer of training to individuals within treated markets. A year and a half after the training has taken place, half of the sample assigned to training was then offered a subsequent mentoring intervention intended to test whether additional group-based and in-person support strengthens the impacts of training. Four rounds of follow-up surveys with low attrition are used to measure impacts at one and three years after training. This is complimented with data from a market census taken four years after training, that also included male-operated firms.