The World Bank thinks it knows why Kenya isn’t growing faster

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A word cloud of responses to a World Bank SMS poll asking “What is the biggest barrier to good jobs in Kenya?”
A word cloud of responses to a World Bank SMS poll asking “What is the biggest barrier to good jobs in Kenya?”
Image: World Bank

Economists in the Nairobi office of the World Bank wanted to uncover the biggest barriers to good jobs in Kenya. So they asked Kenyans via text message (SMS), an increasingly popular tool for conducting consumer and other surveys. Then they generated a word cloud from the resulting responses. While recent bouts of violence in the capital could damage Kenya’s development, the World Bank is still projecting that the country will grow by 5 percent next year.