From Margins to Metrics: Data Powered by Informal Workers

Why It Matters
Nairobi’s waste pickers, domestic workers, and matatu operators keep the city alive — collecting its waste, caring for its homes, and moving its people. Yet the risks they face every day — from harassment and physical injuries to unsafe environments, pollution, and economic insecurity—remain largely invisible in official data and policy.

What We’re Doing
Margins to Metrics puts data in the hands of Nairobi’s informal workers themselves. Twelve worker-researchers — three each from waste picking, domestic work, and matatu operations — are designing and leading the research. Through surveys, focus group  interviews, and community mapping, they’re capturing how risk is experienced day to day, while using environmental sensors and drone imagery to document what’s harder to see.

How It Works
At the heart of Margins to Metrics is community-led data, collected by worker-researchers through surveys, mapping, and local observation. Their first-hand insights capture how risk is experienced across Nairobi’s informal workplaces and homes. These community datasets are then analysed alongside Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s World Risk Poll indicators, linking lived experience with global data on risk and safety. Together, they highlight where environmental, social, and economic pressures intersect—and how evidence rooted in everyday life can inform action and policy.

Who's involved?
Margins to Metrics is led by Haki Data Lab, in partnership with Data4Change, and powered by worker-researchers from Nairobi’s informal sectors. The project is supported by the Social Justice Centre Movement, KUDHEIHA (Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers), and the Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association, who bring deep community ties and advocacy experience. Different parts of the project are funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation and The Hewlett Foundation, whose support helps combine grassroots knowledge with innovative data methods to build evidence for safer, fairer work.

Sharing the Findings
In January 2026 we will share the findings from Margins to Metrics with the informal worker community and the wider public. The data and research findings will be open-access and shared in formats that reach people where they live and work. Alongside reports and policy briefs, results will appear in everyday spaces such as on high-vis vests, and matatu graphics, turning data into conversations in markets, homes, and transport hubs. The goal is simple: to make information visible, usable, and capable of driving change from the ground up.