Ecosystems Are Not Neutral: Who a \”Founder-Friendly City\” Is Actually Friendly To

Of the 1,247+ applications AVODA’s programs have received, we cannot say how many came from women, because they were never tallied by sex. The count also misses the woman who heard about a call too late, or could not reach the venue and get home by daylight, and finding her is our work as much as any city’s.

Startup Genome scores a city’s startup ecosystem on seven measures, and in its 2020 method performance and funding carry 60 percent of the weight. A city that scores well on those is friendly to the founder who raises equity and exits. For most women building businesses in Kampala, friendliness is settled by four plainer things: the hour the city is safe to travel, where a child spends the trading day, what the street license costs and how it is enforced, and how news of support reaches her.

Key Takeaways

City startup rankings reward funding and exits, so a top-ranked city can still be hard on a woman trader with a toddler.
Ozkazanc-Pan and Clark Muntean sort ecosystems into four identities (nascent, communal, bureaucratic, stable) and place Boston, a global top-five startup city, in the stable quadrant, where they judge change toward gender equity hardest.
In a 2023 Kampala trial with 883 women market vendors, free childcare raised hourly earnings by more than half while working hours fell 13 percent.
In a 2021 UN Women survey of 2,548 women who use public transport in Kampala, 7.8 percent felt unsafe by day and 68.8 percent felt unsafe between 7 and 9 pm, when many evening events end.
A program lead can score any venue and schedule on four doors: Hour, Child, License and Word.

What the rankings weigh, and the quadrant that sounds like Kampala

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan (Brown University) and Susan Clark Muntean (University of North Carolina, Asheville) did fieldwork in Boston, St. Louis and Asheville between 2014 and 2019 for Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Their Boston chapter opens on its credentials, including fifth place in Startup Genome’s 2020 global ranking. The method they quote weights ecosystem performance at 40 percent, funding at 20, market reach and connectedness at 12.5 each, talent and experience at 10 each, and knowledge at 5.

Most of that weight describes a venture that seeks outside equity: exits, rounds, investor density, a busy events calendar. The authors then report who holds the seats that decide those inputs. In the 2018 National Venture Capital Association survey they cite, women were 11 percent of investment partners. In St. Louis, a 2013 American Express study they cite ranked the metro last of 25 for capacity to support women-led ventures, and their own eighty-plus interviews found women needed support as much as men did and knew less about where to find it, because programs advertised through word of mouth and insiders’ networks.

A ranking measures the slice of a city it was built to measure. Whether a climbing city has grown kinder to a woman selling cassava chips on Kafumbe Mukasa Road is a separate question.

The book’s most portable idea is a two-by-two (Table 6.1). One axis asks how strong the informal institutions are: shared belief in enterprise, norms, habits of trust. The other asks whether formal institutions (law, policy, public programs) are emergent or established. The four cells are nascent (weak and emergent, their Asheville), communal (strong and emergent, St. Louis), bureaucratic (weak and established) and stable (strong and established, Boston).

Kampala looks communal at first glance: enterprise is admired, savings groups run on dense trust, and the formal support layer is young. The authors’ warning about communal ecosystems lands hard here. The trusted networks that make a community also mark who is outside it, and such ecosystems, they write, “risk formalizing inequality through the manners and practices of actors” who face little formal accountability.

The book also refuses the comfortable reading of the stable quadrant. Boston has the money, the programs and the reputation, and the authors judge it the hardest place to move, because long stability gives the people who benefit from current arrangements little reason to change them. Ranking high and changing slowly can be the same fact.

A 1969 license in a grid drawn for Boston

Before it travels, the grid needs a correction: it assumes formal institutions either support enterprise or are still being built. Kampala has a third kind: old, established rules pointed at the trader.

The Trade Licensing Act of 1969 makes hawking without a license an offense, and the Kampala Capital City Authority enforces it. Miria Mutuwa, a street food vendor who told openDemocracy she made 12,000 to 20,000 Ugandan shillings a day, says that on 30 January 2024 she slipped and fell into a pan of hot cooking oil during a scuffle with a KCCA enforcement officer who wanted to confiscate the food she was selling. In 2019 KCCA consulted on a draft Street Trade Ordinance that proposed a license of Shs210,000 for a grade one vendor and Shs78,750 for grade two, plus Shs50,000 for a uniform. Until June 2023 the country’s markets ran under a Markets Act from 1942.

A 2018 SIHA Network baseline of women street vendors across Kampala’s five divisions found 66.7 percent heading their households, 70.9 percent single, separated or widowed, 58.5 percent walking to work and 71.6 percent selling food. In the book’s vocabulary, Kampala’s formal layer is established, and for this founder it works as a cost. Its strongest informal institutions are the ones no startup index counts.

Kigali shows a different risk. In 2015 the city moved street vendors, mostly women, into 14 free markets with a rent-free year and start-up capital of up to RWf77,000. Two months in, the New Times found some stalls empty and vendors drifting back to the road, where the customers were; a district official called it a “mind-set” problem. By 2016 some Nyabugogo vendors reported loans and safety through their cooperatives. The same policy produced both outcomes, and where each market sat mattered more than the building.

Where a child spends the trading day

The second door is childcare, and here East Africa has the stronger evidence.

In a study of Ugandan drug shops written up by Markus Goldstein of the World Bank, women who had a child under two in the shop earned 48 percent lower profits than other women owners. Zero men had a child present. Those owners reported being out of malarial drugs on 13.9 percent of visits against 5.7 percent for other women, and restocking usually means buying in person at a wholesale outlet. The finding is correlational, and the blog’s reading of the mechanism is the trip itself.

A randomized trial then tested the remedy. Jacklyn Makaaru Arinaitwe, Sylvan Herskowitz and colleagues enrolled 883 women vendors in six markets around Kampala in 2023 and offered free childcare either in “childcare corners” at the market or at a provider near home. Among users, hourly earnings rose by more than 50 percent while working hours fell 13 percent. Take-up of the market corners rose 41 percentage points against 55 for the neighborhood option, and within the market group women who lived closer to the market used it more. Distance worked like a price. At baseline the women were willing to pay about a quarter of its cost, so a market creche that charges full fees will sit empty. It is a September 2026 working paper, so its numbers may move.

The Markets Act 2023, in the words of Local Government Minister Raphael Magyezi, “provides for the construction of day care centers.” At Kasubi Market a daycare completed under the Act served 61 women vendors and 33 children before KCCA took over its running. Nairobi went further in writing: the county and the social enterprise WoW Mom drew up 2021 market guidelines requiring space for childcare, and a 2026 baseline of 600 Nairobi women traders found 84 percent priced out of formal childcare, with about KES 100 a day as the affordable fee.

After seven in the evening

The third door is the clock. UN Women’s 2021 phone survey of 2,548 Kampala women who use public transport asked when they felt unsafe or very unsafe. Between 8 am and 7 pm, 7.8 percent did. Between 7 and 9 pm, 68.8 percent did. After 10 pm, 80.7 percent. About a third had personally experienced sexual harassment on public transport, and about three in ten had been refused transport for their goods.

Put that beside the startup calendar most hubs keep. An ecosystem that holds its pitch nights, demo days and mixers from six to nine has scheduled itself into the hours when about two-thirds of Kampala’s women transport users feel unsafe. Speakers have day jobs, so the slot has its reasons, and it still decides who is in the room.

The Four Doors

A program lead answers four questions about each session, venue or demo day before the calendar goes out.

Hour. Does the session end before 7 pm, and can a woman reach it and get home by daylight on a boda or taxi she can afford?
Child. Where is her child during it? A creche corner, a funded fee at a provider near her home, or permission to bring the child into the room all count. A line telling her to find a sitter leaves the door shut.
License. For traders, does attending cost her a day’s pitch, a confiscation risk or a license she cannot carry? Is the venue somewhere enforcement officers already patrol?
Word. How did she hear about it? The St. Louis lesson is that word of mouth reaches the people already inside. A notice through the market association, the savings group chair or the church women’s fellowship reaches the rest.

Consider a hub, invented for the purpose, that runs Thursday sessions in Kololo from 5:30 to 8:30 pm and advertises them in a founders’ WhatsApp group. It closes all four doors to a vendor in Kasubi. Moving two of that invented hub’s eight sessions to a Saturday morning in a room beside the market, with a paid creche corner, opens three of them for the cost of a room and a caregiver.

Cash or creche: what the Bjorvatn trial found

Kjetil Bjorvatn and five co-authors offered Ugandan mothers of three-to-five-year-olds free full-time childcare, a cash grant of equal value, or both (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2025). Childcare raised full-day enrollment by 150 percent and lifted single mothers’ employment by 29 percent and their income by 45 percent. Among couples it changed little for the mothers and raised fathers’ wage employment instead. The cash grant did more for business: mothers who received it were 61 percent more likely to be self-employed and earned 37 percent higher profits, across household types.

For a woman already trading, money moves the business more broadly than a creche does, and a city that builds daycare while credit stays out of reach leaves her safer and still small. Among couples the household absorbed part of the gain, which a city plan can hardly steer. What the trial leaves standing is the door itself. For single mothers, time was the binding constraint, and childcare alone raised their income by 45 percent. In the SIHA sample, seven in ten Kampala women street vendors were single, separated or widowed.

Old women in the streets of Jerusalem

The childcare trial and the transport survey rest on one premise: women’s earnings rose when a child had a place to be and a woman could travel home in safety, and an output index records neither. A startup index measures output, and output matters, since exits pay salaries. Zechariah measures something else. His picture of a restored city has no towers and no treasury in it: “Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets” (Zechariah 8:4-5). The prophet judges a city by who can safely be present in its public places, and he names the two groups with the least power to insist on it. The woman trading between them belongs in that measure. It is the column the index lacks, and anyone can check it outside a market on a weekday afternoon.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a city founder-friendly for women entrepreneurs?

For women running small and informal businesses, four conditions decide it: safe travel at the hours events run, childcare near the workplace, affordable licensing with fair enforcement, and outreach through channels women already use. Startup rankings mostly measure funding and exits instead.

What is an entrepreneurial ecosystem identity?

In Ozkazanc-Pan and Clark Muntean’s 2022 typology, ecosystems are sorted by the strength of informal norms and whether formal institutions are emergent or established, giving four types: nascent, communal, bureaucratic and stable. The authors judge stable ecosystems such as Boston the hardest to change toward gender equity.

Does childcare increase women traders’ earnings in Kampala?

A randomized trial with 883 women vendors in six greater Kampala markets in 2023 found free childcare raised hourly earnings by more than 50 percent among users while working hours fell 13 percent. Care near home had higher take-up. The results are from a 2026 working paper.

When do women in Kampala feel unsafe on public transport?

In UN Women’s 2021 survey of 2,548 women who use public transport in Kampala, 7.8 percent felt unsafe between 8 am and 7 pm. The share rose to 68.8 percent between 7 and 9 pm and 80.7 percent between 10 pm and 7 am, which matters for any program that schedules evening events.

What law governs street vending in Kampala?

Hawking without a license is an offense under the Trade Licensing Act of 1969, enforced by the Kampala Capital City Authority. In 2019 KCCA consulted on a draft Street Trade Ordinance proposing licenses of Shs210,000 or Shs78,750 plus a uniform fee. Markets moved from the 1942 Act to the Markets Act 2023.

Next Step

Send me the draft of your next cohort calendar, market by-law or women’s enterprise budget, and on a strategy call we can score it against Hour, Child, License and Word before it is published. Bring the attendance list from your last evening event; it usually shows which door was shut.

Sources and Evidence

Ozkazanc-Pan, B. and Clark Muntean, S., Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: A Gender Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2022: DOI 10.1017/9781009023641. Chapter 4 (Boston and the Startup Genome weights), chapter 5 (St. Louis), chapter 6 (Table 6.1, four ecosystem identities), chapter 8 (childcare as a formal institution).
Arinaitwe, Bogere, Fiore, Herskowitz, Lang, Mwesigye and Nalumansi, “Childcare for Informal-Sector Workers: Delivery Models, Access, and Welfare”, IZA DP 18910, September 2026: the Kampala market childcare trial, earnings, hours, take-up by model and distance, willingness to pay.
Goldstein, M., “The Baby-Profit Gap for firms”, World Bank Development Impact, 27 January 2021: Delecourt and Fitzpatrick’s Uganda drug-shop findings on profits, children present and stock-outs.
UN Women, Statistical Evidence of Women’s Use and Experience of Public Transport in Kampala, October 2021: unsafe-by-hour shares, harassment and refusal to carry goods.
SIHA Network, “A Shadow Economy: The Invisible Laborers of Kampala”, 12 March 2018: baseline profile of women street vendors in Kampala’s five divisions.
SIHA Network, “A move to formalise street trade in Kampala”, 2 September 2019: proposed license and uniform fees in the draft Street Trade Ordinance.
openDemocracy, “Kampala wants to build a ‘smart city’. Female vendors are paying the price”, 13 March 2024: the Trade Licensing Act of 1969 and Miria Mutuwa’s injury.
Institute for Social Transformation, Markets Act Special Release: the Markets Act 2023 replacing the 1942 Act, effective 8 June 2023, and Minister Magyezi on day care centers.
HealthBridge, “Strengthening community care and food access in Uganda”, June 2025: the Kasubi Market daycare and KCCA’s takeover.
Dalberg Research and WoW Mom, Availing Affordable and Accessible Childcare in Market Centers in Kenya, baseline report, February 2026: childcare access and affordability among 600 Nairobi women traders.
WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities, “Childcare Services in Markets for Economic Growth”: Nairobi’s 2021 market guidelines requiring childcare space.
The New Times, “Mixed fortunes for vendors in city’s newly-created free markets”, 7 September 2015: Kigali’s relocation of women vendors and the empty stalls.
The New Times, “Female street vendors get relief in new markets”, 14 September 2016: Nyabugogo cooperatives a year on.
NHH, “How Childcare Supports Families and Businesses in Uganda”, on Bjorvatn et al., AEJ: Applied Economics 17(2), 2025: childcare versus equal-value cash grants.
Trinity College Dublin, abstract of “Childcare, Labour Supply and Business Development: Experimental Evidence from Uganda”: effects among couples and of cash across household types.
Zechariah 8:3-5 (ESV), Bible Gateway: the restored city’s streets.