Veronica Mwangi

Although there is a growing body of literature on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, limited evidence exists on the impact of the pandemic on informal female-owned enterprises, and especially those that are located in urban informal settlements. Based on a quantitative survey of 448 vendors selected through stratified random sampling, this study employed a descriptive design to examine the dynamics of women-led informal food vending enterprises across four informal settlements in Nairobi, with particular emphasis on the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the vendors’ coping strategies. Our findings show that women food vendors face numerous challenges which intensified during the pandemic, leading to increased business operation costs, spoilage of perishable products, and oscillating daily sales and profits due to unpredictable market forces. The vendors adopted various strategies to cushion their enterprises and households, including price and stock adjustments; the implementation of hygiene measures; increased use of mobile phones for transactions; reliance on credit, loans, savings, and social networks; temporary business closures; and the relocation of household members to rural areas. These results underscore the critical need for context-specific strategies to support and foster the resilience and sustainability of informal economies during future global pandemics. This is particularly urgent given that very few vendors received some form of institutional support, in addition to having limited access to business loans and training opportunities.

Whereas there is a growing body of literature on the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, limited evidence exists on the impact of the pandemic on informal female-owned enterprises, and especially those that are located in urban informal settlements. In this study, we explore the adverse impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on women food vendors enterprises and their coping strategies across four informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. The study is based on a quantitative survey of 448 women vendors selected through stratified random sampling. Our findings show that women food vendors face numerous challenges which intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to increased costs of business operations, spoilage of perishable products, and oscillating daily sales and profits, largely due to the unpredictable market supply and demand forces. The vendors adopted a number of strategies to cushion their business enterprises and households, including price and stock adjustments, use of mobile phones and hygiene measures at business enterprises, reliance on credit, loans, savings and social networks for survival, temporary closure of business, and relocation of household members to the rural home. These results underscore the critical need for context-specific strategies to support and foster resilience of informal economies during future global pandemics.