The YEG project focuses on the problem of youth un- and underemployment in urban slums in Africa. The pilot project is providing enterprise grants and a smart phone to, primarily, young people living in Mathare, a low-income (slum) settlement in Nairobi.
The payments, totaling approximately $1,200 per beneficiary are made via mobile money. The project does not dictate how young people use or invest the money – but they are being ‘nudged’ or encouraged to invest or expand their existing business or income-generating activities. To support their propensity to invest in economic activities, recipients have been given a low-cost smartphone onto which a range of business and money management apps have been loaded.