| dc.description.abstract | Employment promotion plays a central role in promoting a
country's development goals. It links economic growth and
distribution of income with alleviation of poverty. In an effort
to solve the unemployment problem many developing countries have
often found themselves in a dilemma. In particular, Kenya has
been unable to solve this problem since independence. The
continuous rural-urban migration had made this impossible for
Kenya, especially in the urban city of Nairobi. The modern
sector alone is not capable of absorbing all the migrants. Most
of them end up in the informal sector either for the purpose of
seeking training or for the purpose of employment.
It appears that the burden of employment promotion in the
urban economy is gradually shifting to the urban informal sector
activities. The study is focused on the employment potential of
urban informal garages in Nairobi.
Econometric methods are applied to data from sixty-nine
garages in three different areas: Informal, formalized, and
formal garages. The data was obtained through fieldwork
undertaken in Nairobi in these three areas in the months of April
and May 1989.
The analysis of the data showed that the factors that --.
influence employment in the urban informal and formalized garages
are investment, capital stock, education of the proprietors,
(vi)
experience of the proprietors, demand for garage repairs and
services, and net income or the returns from invested capital.
The study reveals that there are strong relationships between
employment and capital stock, demand and experience, with all the
factors positively related to number of vehicle repairers engaged
in each type of garages.
An interesting result of this study is that urban informal
sector garages have great potential for employment. With the
modest capital stock, some garages are engaging an average of 13
vehicle repairers, contrary to results of earlier surveys e.g.
Ndua and Ng'ethe (1984) and the CBS' (1983) that the informal
sector is one person's affair. | en |
