In 2021, MESH joined forces with Mastercard Strive to implement an ambitious program aimed to understand and address the unique challenges and needs of informal micro-entrepreneurs, including supporting them to digitize their businesses and gain access to online markets.
Our two-year program with Mastercard Strive supported MESH in the development and implementation of a data-driven digital community. Over the past two years, MESH has grown into a thriving online community of thousands of Kenyan micro-entrepreneur members.
This success did not happen overnight.
We invested a lot of time into responsive and iterative platform development, encouraging engagement between MESHERS and implementing a rigorous monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework.
We re-evaluated many assumptions we held about micro-entrepreneurs at the beginning of this journey.
We faced many challenges in developing effective solutions that addressed the needs of these micro-entrepreneurs.
We have captured the lessons learned from our early days in a Practice Paper, in partnership with Mastercard Strive and Caribou Digital.
In this paper, we reflect on our learning journey thus far alongside the decisions we made and the solutions we developed, highlighting our lessons and best practices.
We hope that this paper will enable other organizations to venture into supporting young micro-entrepreneurs and young East Africans in general. Together, we can ensure that the building youth population is not a threat but rather a benefit to the growing African economy.
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