I went from not having food to making Ksh 12,000 a day.

Amina runs a small restaurant in Kilifi. Her main customers are the men who work at a nearby quarry; they come in tired, dusty, hungry. She knows what they want before they sit down. She has been feeding this community for years, out of a small kitchen she built with her own hands and her own savings. A year ago, that kitchen was everything she had. Today, Amina has expanded. A mud structure now stands alongside the original kitchen, a proper sitting space where her customers eat with dignity...

There is a woman in Karanjee, Nairobi, who has been running a grocery stall for years. She opens before the neighborhood wakes. She knows which customers will pay on time and which ones she will have to chase. She knows which days are slow and which days she can restock. She has kept this business alive while still paying school fees and medical bills and the particular mathematics of a household that never quite adds up. Ask her how much profit she made last month. She will go quiet. Not...