Financial interventions for new business venture start-ups: enhancing small businesses for women and youth in Baringo County, Kenya

Enterprise development interventions refer to programs that provide business-focused solutions to help entrepreneurs in the developing world work their way out of poverty. They provide an intelligent mix of counselling, training and consultancy; financial interventions; infrastructural development and legal and regulatory framework helping people to work their way out of poverty. This paper examines the role of financial interventions in enhancing the growth of new venture start-ups based on a study of women- and youth-owned new enterprises in Baringo County, Kenya. The study adopted a survey research design targeting a population of 1049 respondents from which a sample of 281 was randomly selected. Data was collected using questionnaires and data sheet and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The research findings established that women and youth entrepreneurs accessed funds to start their businesses in form of loans, personal savings, grants, finance from leasing, and finance from Equity bank and other agents. Most of the entrepreneurs were, however, not aware of grant availability in the national and county governments. As a result, very few of them had ever applied for these grants. Moreover, most of those who had applied and gotten the loan said they were not satisfied by the loans because the amount of collateral required was high. Nevertheless, most of the respondents admitted that loan availability, status of the grace period on loans, reimbursement periods and the complexity of application procedures had improved over time. They nonetheless lamented that the interest rates had in fact deteriorated. The study established that there is a significant relationship between financial interventions and new venture start-ups (p=0.005). To mitigate the above challenges, the county government of Baringo should come up with interventions that address issues of access to finances by women and youth entrepreneurs. The county government should also give the women and youth business owners a favourable environment to enable them to undertake their business ventures successfully.