POLICY DIALOGUE

This paper shares an experience of street traders engagement in policy dialogue that arose out of a collaborative research process that began in 19991. The research involved gathering information and processing it for use in local and national policy dialogues between street traders and urban authorities. The paper begins by providing an overview of Micro and Small Enterprises [MSEs] in Kenya, followed by a brief on the research process before discussing policy responses on MSEs development using the case of street traders. 2. OVERVIEW OF MICRO AND SMALL ENTERPRISES Street traders are a sub sector of the MSEs that dominate the Kenyan economy. On average Kenyan MSE employs 1.8 employees. Majority of MSEs are micro enterprises with fewer than 10 employees, while 70 per cent of them are one person, own account workers. This infers that majority of MSE entrepreneurs are operating at the bottom of the economy, with a significant percentage falling among the 53 per cent of Kenyan