“Exporters Without Borders: Why You Should Start a Company Instead of Working in Aid” by Dane Valerie

This is a crosspost of the full text of Exporters Without Borders: Why You Should Start a Company Instead of Working in Aid from In Development, made for the EA Forum's In Development Highlight Week. If you enjoy the article, you can subscribe to In Development's substack here. June Jambiha was a quintessential hustler. Like many in Kenya's capital of Nairobi, she sold clothing as an informal entrepreneur, her income in 2018 swinging wildly, from $400 one month to $60 the next. This uncertainty made it nearly impossible to plan: hard to save, borrow, or commit to anything beyond the next week. But in Kenya, where over 80% of jobs are informal, hustling was less a choice than the only option available. June joined my company, Wasoko, a B2B e-commerce platform linking small shops to large manufacturers, as a telesales agent. Her starting pay was lower than her best month selling clothing, but, for the first time, it was predictable. She knew what would land in her account the following month and the month after that. More than the money, though, there was an upward trajectory: her career could grow. Joining Wasoko didn’t just give June a [...] --- Outline: (01:29) Entrepreneurship by Default (02:52) Effective Entrepreneurship (06:20) Creating Firms in Poor Countries (11:15) Does This Still Work? (17:52) Founders Journey (23:15) Beyond Wasoko --- First published: May 11th, 2026 Source: --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO . --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts , or another podcast app.