This index is a living document. New writing is added throughout the year; substantive revisions to existing entries are versioned with change notes; retired or superseded entries are archived but not deleted. The Lab does not paywall its work — everything indexed below is readable in full on this site.
§ 1
Flagship articles — forthcoming
Three flagship long-form articles are currently in active development and will be published through this index during the 2026 cycle. Titles, précis, and target publication windows are listed below; drafts circulate with peer readers before public release.
Flagship — forthcomingBounded Leapfrogging: A Typology of Infrastructure Transitions in Emerging Markets
A working paper formalising the "bounded leapfrogging" concept introduced in the electrification programme. The paper argues that emerging-market transitions can proceed to widespread adoption without waiting for legacy infrastructure to be fully built out, provided that the boundary of the leapfrog is identified explicitly — typically the specific infrastructure layer at which the legacy regime still has effective lock-in. Developed from the Lab's MSc thesis work on the Kenyan electric-motorcycle transition, extended through comparative case material from finance and water. Target release: Q3 2026.
Flagship — forthcomingClosed-Loop Architectures and Where to Break Them
A book-length treatment of the closed-loop problem in African mobile-money systems, and a constructive account of what durable interoperability would require. Combines the finance programme's analytical argument with fieldwork-grounded case material from the four financing architectures, and places the Kenyan case in comparative context against Ugandan, Rwandan, Nigerian, and Ghanaian parallels. Target release: Q4 2026 (book-length draft); intermediate briefs to be published incrementally.
Flagship — forthcomingBRW in Practice: Applying the Typology to Water, Energy, and Finance
A methodological paper that extends the BRW typology from its origin in the Kenyan electric-motorcycle case into parallel applications across the Lab's three active programmes. The paper's core claim is that the typology produces analytically distinct readings of apparently-similar transitions — and that the cross-sector comparative work is where the framework earns its keep. Target release: Q2 2026.
§ 2
Research briefs & deep-dives
Published entries, available in full on this site.
Deep-dive — v1.1
The Four Financing Architectures
A structured analysis of the four distinct financing architectures in African e-mobility — PAYGO, ride-to-own, BaaS, and concessional climate finance — and what each reveals about the payment layer beneath.
Read the piece →
Deep-dive — v1.0
Payment-rail Interoperability
What durable interoperability between payment rails would actually require — across infrastructure, product, policy, and community dimensions that have to be solved together.
Read the piece →
Deep-dive — v1.1
Diaspora Remittance as Infrastructure
Kenya received USD 4.9B in diaspora remittances in 2024. What would it mean, operationally, to route a meaningful share of that flow directly into specific obligations rather than general-purpose cash?
Read the piece →
Policy analysis — v1.1
Regulatory Frameworks for Payment & Electrification Innovation
An operator's-eye reading of the four regulatory instruments that shape the Lab's research terrain in Kenya — the NPS Act, the Digital Credit Regulations, the Data Protection Act, and the NEMP.
Read the piece →
Methodology — v2.0
The BRW Typology
The Lab's signature methodological contribution — a three-strategy framework (bypass · repurpose · weaken) for reading how new infrastructure systems navigate entrenched legacy regimes, with full methods documentation.
Read the methodology →
Programme paper — v1.0
Electrification & E-Mobility Transitions
How electric two-wheelers are actually crossing the affordability threshold in Kenya — the financing architectures, the BRW strategies each player pursues, and what the transition tells us more broadly.
Read the programme →
§ 3
Field notes & shorter entries
Shorter, argument-oriented pieces that sit between the long-form articles and the programme pages. Most are 800–2,000 words; each is dated; each is self-contained but often points to relevant long-form pieces for deeper treatment.
Field note · February 2026Reading the NEMP: What the National Electric Mobility Policy Actually Says
A close reading of the specific provisions of Kenya's National Electric Mobility Policy, published 3 February 2026, with the Lab's assessment of which provisions are substantive and which are aspirational. Supplementary to the full regulatory analysis.
Field note · January 2026Why Battery Swap Won't Scale Without Inter-Operator Settlement
A short piece arguing that battery-swap infrastructure in Kenya has reached the point where its own scaling is being constrained not by swap-station economics but by the absence of inter-operator settlement. Develops one strand of the electrification programme.
Field note · December 2025What "Financial Inclusion" Actually Measures, and What It Misses
A critical reading of the Findex-style inclusion metrics that dominate the financial-inclusion discourse, arguing that account-ownership measures systematically understate the structural lock-in that determines what an account actually lets a user do. Supplementary to the finance programme.
Field note · November 2025Caretaker Trust and the Limits of Digital Water
An account of why every "digital water" intervention in Nairobi informal settlements that bypasses the caretaker layer tends to underperform, and what a repurpose-strategy (per the BRW typology) engagement with the caretaker layer looks like in practice. Draws on the Lab's water programme.
Field note · October 2025Comparing the African E-Mobility Markets: Early Observations
Cross-country notes from preparatory work for the comparative African e-mobility paper. Early observations on the differences between the Kenyan, Ugandan, Rwandan, Nigerian, and Ghanaian transitions, with particular attention to how the BRW strategy mix varies across markets.
Field note · September 2025Why "Leapfrogging" Is the Wrong Word
A short corrective to the widely-used "leapfrog" framing in development-technology discourse, introducing the Lab's "bounded leapfrogging" alternative and previewing the forthcoming working paper.
Field note · August 2025The Daraja Developer Community Is the Interesting Sociological Fact
An observation, developed from engagement with Nairobi fintech developers, that the largest developer community in African mobile-money innovation has formed around a single closed-loop API. What this means for any attempt at open-standards interoperability, and why community formation has to be a research output in its own right.
Field note · July 2025Notes on Concessional Finance as Public-Goods Infrastructure Funder
A short piece on why concessional climate finance is structurally well-placed to fund the shared-infrastructure components (interoperability layers, identity primitives, sandbox participation) that no single commercial operator has the incentive to fund alone, and what that implies for donor-agency programme design.
§ 4
Working documents & standing references
Standing pieces maintained as living documents rather than dated entries.
§ 5
Citation and reuse
The Lab's work is published openly and is free to cite, quote in context, translate, and build on. We ask, as a matter of professional courtesy, that citations acknowledge the Lab as author, that substantive quotations identify the specific entry and version, and that readers contact us directly if they are extending our work into new empirical domains so that the extensions can be indexed in future versions of the relevant entries. A suggested citation format for each entry is available on request.
For correspondence on specific entries — corrections, counter-arguments, replication attempts, or extensions — see contact.