A Personal Letter from
Mathieu K. Gouanou
Founder, BASE1: The World Informal Economy Summit
Dear builders, workers, partners, and friends,
Today is May 1, 2026.
Exactly 140 years after May 1, 1886, when workers in Chicago marched for dignity and time, we are opening another chapter in the same unfinished story. Then, the demand was the eight-hour day. Today, the demand is visibility, agency, and fair participation in economic systems for the people who still work without protection, recognition, and voice.
I am writing to you as someone who has spent years listening across ministries, markets, cooperatives, field programs, mobile money networks, and informal worker communities. Different geographies. Different institutions. Different languages. Yet the same recurring pattern: the people holding local economies together are too often the people least represented in formal systems.
The numbers are too large to ignore. The BASE1 Formalization Velocity Index™ (FVI) White Paper cites 2.1 billion workers in informal employment globally, representing 57.8% of the global workforce [Source 1]. The same source shows that over 35% of GDP in low and middle income countries originates from informal activities, and that 8 out of 10 enterprises worldwide operate informally [Source 1].
These are not edge cases. This is a central operating layer of the world economy.
Our responsibility is not to romanticize informality. It is to stop treating it as a permanent condition. It is also not enough to count people and publish annual snapshots. We need to build pathways where workers can move from vulnerability to stability, from cash opacity to recognized economic identity, from survival loops to investable trajectories.
That is why BASE1 exists.
BASE1 is not a campaign built around a slogan. It is a collaborative movement for measurable transition. Our core proposition is simple: we do not measure informality as a fixed state. We measure formalization as movement [Source 1]. We built the Formalization Velocity Index to help all of us see where progress is accelerating, where it is stalling, and what to do next.
This first newsletter is an invitation to co-create. Not to consume. Not to applaud. To build.
If you work in a government, a development finance institution, a foundation, a fintech, a telco, a microfinance institution, an NGO, a worker federation, or a local business network, there is a role for you in what happens next.
On this Labour Day, we honor the struggles that won rights for formal workers. We also acknowledge the unfinished promise. Rights that do not reach the majority are not yet universal. Systems that do not include 2.1 billion workers are not yet complete.
I invite you to read this manifesto as a working document. Challenge it. Improve it. Add your institutional intelligence. Add your local knowledge. Add your operational reality.
The future of formalization will not be written by one organization. It will be built by aligned ecosystems.
With respect and urgency,
Mathieu K. Gouanou
The Opening Scene
Labour Day was born out of labor struggle, sacrifice, and collective organizing. The events around May 1, 1886, and Haymarket, still matter because they established a principle that work is not only an economic transaction. Work is social life, rights, safety, and human dignity.
Over time, many labor institutions were built around the formal wage relationship. This was historically understandable. Payrolls were easier to track than self-employment. Registered factories were easier to regulate than dispersed micro-enterprises. Formal contracts were easier to enforce than verbal or seasonal agreements.
But in much of the world, that model never became the dominant reality for workers.
The multilateral and bilateral investor research in your uploaded files confirms that major institutions now recognize this gap. The World Bank analysis in the research set notes that informality can account for over 70% of employment in emerging and developing economies and nearly one-third of GDP [Source 2]. The same research emphasizes that sustainable development and poverty reduction are unattainable if most workers remain outside social protection and formal financial systems [Source 2].
So this Labour Day, the challenge is not whether formal workers matter. Of course they do. The challenge is whether our policy, finance, and implementation systems still define labor progress too narrowly.
If our frameworks celebrate workers that institutions can already see, and overlook workers that institutions still cannot serve well, then we have a design problem.
This is why the opening scene for BASE1 must be honest. The labor question of 2026 is no longer only about labor standards inside formal employment. It is also about transition architecture for workers and enterprises moving across the formal-informal boundary every day.
This boundary is dynamic. Workers shift between casual work, own-account activity, seasonal trade, digital gigs, domestic labor, transport services, and small producer roles. Enterprises shift between registration statuses as conditions change. Households combine formal and informal income streams to survive.
A static institutional lens cannot capture this lived reality.
What we need now is a broader social contract for work that includes four elements:
visibility in data systems,
access to social protection,
access to fair and usable finance,
and practical pathways to progressive formalization.
Labour Day gave us a language of rights. The next chapter asks us to build the infrastructure of inclusion.
The Invisible Majority
The phrase invisible majority is not rhetorical. It is empirical.
The BASE 1 FVI White Paper cites 2.1 billion workers in informal employment globally, equal to 57.8% of the global workforce [Source 1]. It also cites over 35% of GDP in low and middle income countries originating from informal activities, plus the estimate that 8 out of 10 enterprises worldwide operate informally [Source 1].
This scale changes how we should think about growth, resilience, and labor futures.
Regional reality
Informality is globally distributed but regionally concentrated. The White Paper table reports:
Africa: 85% informal employment rate, with an estimated 340 to 420 million informal workers [Source 1]
Asia-Pacific: 68% informal employment rate, with an estimated 1.1 to 1.3 billion informal workers [Source 1]
Latin America and Caribbean: 52% informal employment rate, with an estimated 140 to 160 million informal workers [Source 1]
Arab States: 69% informal employment rate, with an estimated 80 to 110 million informal workers [Source 1]
Europe and Central Asia: 25% informal employment rate, with an estimated 70 to 90 million informal workers [Source 1]
The distribution highlights two realities at once. First, informality is highly concentrated in regions where public systems carry high delivery constraints. Second, informality is present in every region, including places with stronger formal institutions.
So this is not a single-region issue. It is a global systems issue with differentiated regional patterns.
Gender reality
The White Paper makes the gender dimension explicit. It states that women constitute approximately 55 to 58% of informal workers in many developing regions [Source 1]. It also states that in low income countries, women’s informal employment rates exceed men’s by 4.7 percentage points, and that 93% of women in least developed countries are informally employed [Source 1].
The same source cites a 1.9 trillion dollar financing gap for women entrepreneurs [Source 1].
The investor research adds institutional context. AfDB’s AFAWA initiative is designed around an estimated 42 billion dollar financing gap for women entrepreneurs and had approved over 804 million dollars for lending through partner institutions in 23 countries by late 2022 [Source 2]. ADFI includes a mandate that 60% of its 332 million targeted beneficiaries are women [Source 2].
These are not disconnected facts. They tell a coherent story:
women are overrepresented in more vulnerable informal segments,
capital systems under-serve women-led enterprises,
and targeted interventions are growing but still below the scale required.
Institutional reality
The research set shows that major institutions now recognize informality as central, yet engagement quality varies.
From Source 2:
World Bank activity score in this research: 8/10
IFC: 9/10
UNCDF: 10/10
ADB: 6/10
This variation matters because it affects implementation speed, not only strategic intent.
From Source 3, we also see strong ecosystem actors rooted in worker realities:
WIEGO activity score: 10/10
SEWA activity score: 10/10
StreetNet activity score: 10/10
IDWF activity score: 10/10
These actors are often closest to lived labor realities but farthest from large-scale capital allocation systems.
Daily economy reality
The invisible majority is not invisible to itself. It is invisible to fragmented systems.
Workers in informal settings often face overlapping constraints documented across the source set:
limited social safety nets [Sources 1, 2]
weak or costly formalization pathways [Sources 1, 2]
thin-file financial profiles and low access to affordable credit [Sources 1, 2, 4]
low digital trust or fragmented service access [Sources 2, 3]
This creates what many field actors already know: people are economically active but institutionally unrecognized.
The task is not to label them informal forever. The task is to reduce the distance between real economic activity and formal opportunity.
Why this majority matters for everyone
Ignoring this majority is no longer a neutral policy choice. It is a growth constraint, a resilience risk, and a legitimacy risk.
Source 1 links informality to unrealized potential at global scale, citing over 5 trillion dollars of unrealized economic potential in the declaration section [Source 1]. Source 2 documents how informality weakens fiscal capacity and macroeconomic effectiveness when left unaddressed [Source 2].
Put simply, there is no serious strategy for inclusive growth, climate adaptation, gender equity, or productive employment that can bypass the informal economy.
The majority is already here.
The real question is whether institutions can align fast enough to serve it.
What invisibility looks like in practice
When this majority remains invisible to systems, three predictable outcomes appear.
First, workers pay more to access basic services. Informal fees, travel costs, and opportunity costs replace predictable service delivery.
Second, governments lose policy precision. Programs are funded, but targeting and sequencing errors reduce impact.
Third, financiers face avoidable uncertainty. Without recognized data trails, they price risk conservatively, which raises the cost of capital for people already excluded.
This is why visibility is not only a moral imperative. It is a productivity imperative. Better visibility improves allocation quality for everyone in the system.
The Three Failures
This manifesto proposes that the global formalization effort is currently limited by three systemic failures: measurement failure, capital failure, and voice failure.
None of these failures is absolute. Progress exists in each area. But progress is still too fragmented and too slow for the scale of the challenge.
Failure 1: We measure the wrong thing, too late
Source 1 states this clearly: for decades, institutions have heavily measured informality but often asked the wrong operational question [Source 1]. Static snapshots answer “how many are informal today,” but not “where formalization is accelerating tomorrow.”
The White Paper identifies four practical weaknesses in the legacy measurement model [Source 1]:
backward-looking data cycles,
static snapshots with weak directional value,
descriptive metrics with limited predictive utility,
low actionability for investment and policy timing.
It also cites that annual surveys can take 12 to 24 months to compile, analyze, and publish [Source 1]. In high-volatility environments, that lag is operationally expensive.
A ministry deciding where to prioritize registration simplification cannot rely only on year-old snapshots. A DFI deciding where to deploy blended finance cannot rely only on static averages. A fintech deciding where to test thin-file credit innovations cannot rely only on historical national aggregates.
What gets lost in static measurement is momentum.
The White Paper’s core proposition is to shift from status measurement to transition measurement, through formalization velocity, stakeholder engagement, risk-adjusted opportunity, and forecasting layers [Source 1]. Whether one adopts the exact model or not, the underlying logic is hard to dispute:
transitions are dynamic,
policy windows are time-sensitive,
and capital allocation improves when timing intelligence improves.
Another measurement failure is false comparability.
Two countries can share similar informality levels and have very different trajectories. Source 1 gives this logic explicitly, illustrating that a country with higher current informality but stronger velocity can be a more attractive transition environment than a lower-informality country with weak momentum [Source 1].
If we only rank by current informality rates, we misallocate attention.
A third measurement failure is weak integration across stakeholder layers.
Source 2 and Source 3 both show that government commitment, development agency support, private sector execution, and community trust all matter for implementation. Yet most traditional datasets are not built to track this combined execution quality in near-real time.
The result is not just poor data. It is poor sequence design.
When sequence design fails:
social protection pilots launch before beneficiary onboarding systems are ready,
digital finance products launch without trust infrastructure,
and formalization incentives launch without administrative usability.
Measurement is not a reporting layer. It is a coordination layer.
When we measure too late and too narrowly, coordination fails by design.
Failure 2: Capital is active, but alignment is weak
The second failure is not lack of capital headlines. It is weak conversion from capital commitments to systemic transition pathways.
Per your instruction, we do not use an unverified 400 billion dollar claim. We use verified evidence from the four required sources.
Verified examples from Source 2 include:
IFC estimates an 8 trillion dollar MSME financing shortfall when informal enterprises are included [Source 2].
IFC launched a 1 billion dollar Base of the Pyramid platform in 2021 [Source 2].
IFC’s May 2024 MSME platform allocates up to 4 billion dollars from IFC and aims to mobilize another 4 billion dollars through intermediaries [Source 2].
AfDB’s AFAWA addresses a 42 billion dollar financing gap for women entrepreneurs [Source 2].
AFAWA had approved over 804 million dollars through partner financial institutions in 23 countries as of late 2022 [Source 2].
USAID Digital Invest grants are expected to unlock over 300 million dollars in private capital for DFS providers and internet service companies [Source 2].
GIIN data in the report cites a 1.571 trillion dollar impact investing market and states that in 2024, 27% of surveyed impact investors allocated 30% or more of assets to majority women-owned or women-led businesses [Source 2].
These are substantial commitments and mobilization signals.
So where is the failure?
The failure is in last-mile conversion logic.
Source 2 repeatedly describes a gap between macro-level financing architecture and micro-level realities of informal enterprises [Source 2]. That phrase is central. It appears in different forms across institutions.
Capital can be announced at scale while implementation remains constrained by:
weak distribution infrastructure,
weak local data for underwriting or beneficiary targeting,
high onboarding friction,
weak product-market fit for irregular incomes,
and weak links between social protection, finance, and enterprise services.
Source 3 echoes the same pattern from the ecosystem side: organizations with deep worker trust often need digitization capacity, identity infrastructure, and integrated tools to convert intent into practical service delivery [Source 3].
In other words, capital and community channels are both present, but not sufficiently integrated.
A second capital failure is risk architecture mismatch.
Formal lenders still depend heavily on credit histories and documentation that many informal workers cannot provide. Source 2 documents that 70% of MSMEs in emerging markets lack adequate financing [Source 2]. Source 1 and Source 4 emphasize that much of this is not only due to lack of repayment capacity, but lack of recognized data trails that institutions trust [Sources 1, 4].
Without better risk translation tools, capital either stays upstream or is priced too high downstream.
A third capital failure is gender design underperformance.
Despite growing gender-lens commitments, Source 1 still reports a 1.9 trillion dollar financing gap for women entrepreneurs [Source 1]. Source 2 and Source 3 show strong institutional responses, but also confirm persistent barriers including product design gaps, digital adoption gaps, and capacity gaps [Sources 2, 3].
If capital products do not fit women’s actual enterprise cycles and constraints, deployment statistics will improve while impact quality stagnates.
A fourth capital failure is pilot fragmentation.
Many institutions are now open to pilots. That is positive. Yet pilot design often lacks a clear pathway to policy integration, portfolio integration, or interoperable scaling.
A useful distinction:
pilot as proof of concept only,
versus pilot as system migration step.
The second is what formalization at scale needs.
A capital strategy for informal economy transition should combine:
catalytic capital with measurable transition KPIs,
local data and trust infrastructure,
product adaptation for irregular income realities,
explicit gender design requirements,
scale pathways defined before pilot launch.
Without these, capital can move in volume while informality persistence remains high.
Failure 3: The people most studied are still too rarely co-designers
The third failure is voice.
Informal workers are deeply researched, frequently profiled, and often represented indirectly. But they are still not systematically embedded as co-design partners in policy and product cycles.
Source 3 provides a strong map of worker-centered institutions: WIEGO, SEWA, StreetNet, IDWF, BRAC, CARE, and others. Many have very high activity scores and direct legitimacy with worker communities [Source 3].
The same source also documents unmet needs around digital infrastructure, service modernization, and scalable implementation models [Source 3].
This should change how we define voice.
Voice is not only consultation workshops.
Voice means workers and worker institutions have structured influence over:
problem framing,
solution design,
delivery rules,
success metrics,
and accountability loops.
A policy crafted for informal workers is not equivalent to a policy co-designed with informal workers.
A product marketed to informal workers is not equivalent to a product iterated with their economic data and lived workflows.
Voice failure appears in three practical forms.
Form 1:
Representation without protocol.
Stakeholder meetings include civil society representatives but lack decision protocol that ties field evidence to product or policy revisions.
Form 2:
Validation at the end, not at the beginning.
Communities are invited to “validate” near-final designs rather than co-creating architecture from the start.
Form 3:
Narrative asymmetry.
Institutional actors publish most data narratives while worker organizations lack equal publishing and analytic infrastructure.
Source 3 actually points toward the solution. It identifies multiple organizations ready for pilot hosting, distribution partnerships, and joint implementation models [Source 3]. This is a practical foundation for moving from voice rhetoric to voice infrastructure.
The investor research in Source 2 also supports this direction. Many institutions are explicitly seeking partners that can bridge policy and last-mile execution [Source 2]. Worker organizations and trusted field networks are not peripheral to that bridge. They are essential.
A voice-corrected formalization model should include:
co-governance of pilot design,
community-facing transparency on performance metrics,
compensation and recognition for local implementing knowledge,
and bidirectional data flows where community evidence shapes institutional decisions.
The deeper point is this: voice is not an ethical add-on to formalization. It is an implementation multiplier.
Systems built without local voice tend to fail in adoption. Systems built with local voice tend to detect risk earlier, adapt faster, and sustain trust longer.
If measurement failure distorts timing, and capital failure distorts deployment, voice failure distorts legitimacy.
And without legitimacy, scale does not hold.
The BASE1 Declaration
The BASE1 Declaration proposes seven commitments for a collaborative formalization movement. Each commitment is intended to be actionable, measurable, and open to co-ownership.
Commitment 1:
We commit to transition measurement, not static labeling
We will prioritize metrics that track movement, acceleration, and implementation quality. Static rates remain important, but they are not sufficient for action. We will promote shared measurement frameworks that help governments, financiers, and field actors coordinate decisions in shorter cycles.
Action protocol:
use baseline plus momentum indicators,
publish update cadences transparently,
and connect data outputs to explicit decision points.
Commitment 2:
We commit to a worker-centered formalization pathway
Formalization cannot be reduced to registration alone. We commit to pathways that connect identity, payments, enterprise support, social protection, and rights progression.
Action protocol:
define minimum service bundle for each pilot,
include post-registration support,
and track retention and outcome quality, not only enrollment.
Commitment 3:
We commit to gender-responsive system design
Given the evidence of women’s overrepresentation in vulnerable informal segments and the persistent financing gap, gender response must be designed in from the start [Sources 1, 2].
Action protocol:
disaggregate data by gender,
test products against women’s actual cash flow patterns,
and include women-led organizations in design governance.
Commitment 4:
We commit to last-mile implementation partnerships
Large institutions have capital and policy leverage. Worker organizations and local channels have trust and delivery intelligence. We commit to partnership models that integrate both.
Action protocol:
co-design pilots with local organizations,
define reciprocal value for all partners,
and include capacity budgets for local implementation.
Commitment 5:
We commit to practical interoperability
Fragmented systems create friction costs for workers and institutions. We commit to interoperability across data, payment rails, registration workflows, and social program interfaces where feasible.
Action protocol:
map interface dependencies before launch,
adopt open standards where available,
and publish integration readiness criteria.
Commitment 6:
We commit to responsible capital sequencing
Capital should be deployed where implementation readiness and transition momentum can absorb it productively. We commit to linking investment decisions with readiness diagnostics and clear scale pathways.
Action protocol:
require pilot-to-scale plans upfront,
tie disbursements to implementation milestones,
and include risk translation support for thin-file populations.
Commitment 7:
We commit to shared accountability and learning
Formalization at scale will involve uncertainty. We commit to transparent learning loops that share what works, what fails, and what changes.
Action protocol:
publish quarterly learning briefs,
run cross-partner review sessions,
and maintain open issue logs for policy and product friction points.
Declaration in practice
These commitments are not abstract. They align with verified evidence from the four required sources:
Source 1 identifies the scale challenge and the need to shift from static description to momentum intelligence.
Source 2 documents growing institutional capital and the policy-to-practice gap.
Source 3 maps trusted ecosystem actors with high field legitimacy and implementation potential.
Source 4 reinforces the platform thesis that integrated measurement and implementation layers can accelerate formalization outcomes.
This declaration is therefore both normative and operational.
Normative, because it affirms dignity, rights, and inclusion.
Operational, because it defines collaboration mechanisms that can be implemented in real programs.
To keep these commitments practical, BASE1 proposes five shared operating principles across all participating actors.
Minimum viable collaboration: start with concrete, bounded deliverables instead of broad MOUs with unclear execution paths.
Evidence before expansion: validate outcomes in transparent pilots before scaling claims.
Institutional humility: combine global frameworks with local implementation intelligence.
Reciprocal value: every partner should gain operational value, not only reputational association.
Public learning discipline: publish what did not work, not only success narratives.
These principles are intended to protect momentum from common failure patterns: overdesign, overpromising, and under-coordination.
The First 100 Days
The first 100 days of BASE1 run from May 1, 2026 to August 1, 2026.
The objective is not to do everything. The objective is to deliver visible, credible building blocks that prove coordinated progress is possible.
Day 1 to Day 30:
Align the evidence and partnership architecture
Deliverables:
BASE1 Verified Data Room v1
A structured evidence repository containing the core verified metrics used in this manifesto, with source traceability to the four required documents.
Country Prioritization Sprint
A collaborative sprint to shortlist initial countries where data readiness, institutional willingness, and delivery partnerships are strongest.
Partner Co-Design Roundtables
Convenings across three groups:
institutional capital actors,
digital finance and distribution actors,
worker and ecosystem organizations.
Measurement Protocol Draft
A practical protocol for baseline plus momentum monitoring, including update cadence and accountability routines.
Success indicator by day 30: shared agreement on pilot architecture and decision criteria.
Day 31 to Day 60:
Launch pilot design and implementation readiness
Deliverables:
Two pilot design charters
Each charter to include target population, service bundle, governance, risk assumptions, and scale pathway.
Gender Implementation Checklist
A field-tested checklist to ensure product, outreach, and support design fit women-led informal enterprise realities.
Voice Governance Protocol
A protocol for embedding worker and community organizations in decision loops, not only stakeholder communication loops.
Readiness Dashboard Beta
A lightweight dashboard tracking implementation readiness across policy, data, operational, and trust dimensions.
Success indicator by day 60: pilots approved for launch with clear roles, milestones, and learning objectives.
Day 61 to Day 100:
Start execution and publish the first learning cycle
Deliverables:
Pilot activation in selected sites
Launch initial implementation activities with field partners and institutional observers.
Quarterly Learning Note 01
Publish a public learning note summarizing early signals, adaptations, and unresolved bottlenecks.
Capital Translation Brief
Issue a brief for capital actors translating early implementation evidence into de-risked expansion pathways.
Worker Experience Brief
Issue a partner brief grounded in direct user experience and local implementer feedback.
Success indicator by August 1, 2026: first measurable evidence that coordination, not isolated pilots, drives better outcomes.
Why these first 100 days matter
Many programs lose momentum because strategy remains abstract and pilots are not linked to scale architecture. The first 100 days are designed to avoid that trap.
By August 1, BASE1 intends to show four proofs:
proof of verified data discipline,
proof of collaborative governance,
proof of actionable implementation design,
proof of transparent learning.
If these four proofs are credible, expansion becomes a systems question, not a branding question.
Public accountability milestones for August 1, 2026
By August 1, BASE1 will publish a concise accountability annex with:
baseline metric table used in pilot scoping,
partner participation summary by stakeholder type,
implementation frictions identified and response actions,
first-cycle inclusion outcomes with gender disaggregation where available,
and next-cycle priorities for September to December 2026.
This annex is essential for trust. It ensures that early claims remain proportional to evidence and that course correction happens in public view.
The Invitation
This manifesto closes with a clear invitation.
Not an invitation to subscribe to a narrative. An invitation to co-build measurable transition pathways.
If you are reading this from a ministry, join us to align policy sequence with implementation sequence.
If you are reading this from a development finance institution or foundation, join us to connect capital commitments with field-convertible execution models.
If you are reading this from a fintech, telco, or microfinance institution, join us to design products that fit the actual economic rhythms of informal workers and enterprises.
If you are reading this from an NGO, worker federation, or local ecosystem organization, join us to co-govern delivery logic and ensure that local intelligence shapes system design from day one.
Our invitation is guided by one principle: no single actor can formalize a fragmented system alone.
The sources behind this newsletter show that many ingredients already exist:
strong policy institutions,
growing capital mechanisms,
expanding digital rails,
trusted community organizations.
What is still missing is sufficient alignment.
BASE1 is designed to help build that alignment.
If you choose to engage in this first cycle, we invite you to bring one concrete contribution:
one dataset,
one pilot channel,
one policy window,
one implementation team,
or one worker network.
Start with one. Build from there.
On Labour Day, we remember that progress has always come from organized collaboration between people who decided that existing systems were not good enough.
May 1, 1886 was a demand for dignity in work.
May 1, 2026 can be the start of a coordinated effort to extend that dignity to the 2.1 billion workers still waiting for systems that see them, serve them, and grow with them.
Let us build this next chapter together.
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References
Gouanou, M.K. (2025). BASE 1 Technical White Paper: The Formalization Velocity Index™ (FVI). BASE1: The World Informal Economy Summit.
BASE1 Research Team (2026). Partnership Landscape Analysis: Multilateral Development Banks, Bilateral Agencies, and Blended Finance Vehicles. BASE1: The World Informal Economy Summit.
BASE1 Research Team (2026). Partnership Landscape Analysis: NGOs, Civil Society Organizations, and Ecosystem Players. BASE1: The World Informal Economy Summit.
BASE1 Research Team (2026). Partnership Landscape Analysis: Fintechs, Telcos, Mobile Money Providers, and Microfinance Institutions. BASE1: The World Informal Economy Summit.
International Labour Organization (2024). Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Update. ILO Publications. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/publications/women-and-men-informal-economy-statistical-update
International Labour Organization (2023). World Employment and Social Outlook 2023: The Value of Essential Work. ILO Publications. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/
World Bank Group (2022). Informal Economy Database. World Bank Data Catalog. Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/
International Finance Corporation (2023). MSME Finance Gap: Assessment of the Shortfalls and Opportunities in Financing Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Emerging Markets. IFC Publications. Available at: https://www.ifc.org/msme-finance-gap
