Everyday entrepreneurship in poverty: a focus on the networks of the developing world

Abstract Slums are singled out as ‘outposts’ of inescapable clutches of poverty. This widely held assumption overlooks everyday entrepreneurship in slum–based networks of donated community asset vouchers (CAVs). Utilising the closeness centrality literature, we examine 185,227 transactions involving 4972 slum entrepreneurs across 60 Kenyan shanty towns. Leveraging the panoramic view afforded by their closeness centrality position in their networks, they establish a slum system of economic and social interactions based on timed CAV circulations. This contributes to research by extending the concept of networks to incorporate closeness centrality in unusual slum–based CAV networks with economic, policy, and social implications for over a billion people the UN–Habitat categorises as inhabitants of slums or shanty towns scattered across many parts of the developing world.