Figure A6.2 in the appendix displays maps of conflict events before program initiation and between baseline and endline survey. The difference in conflict exposure between control and treatment group is only significant at the 90 % level. To control for potential selection bias, we include conflict exposure as control variable in our regressions. In addition, we find no evidence that attrition depended on the selection of the original treatment group (Appendix table A1.1), nor differential attrition across covariates between these two groups (Appendix table A1.3).<sup>8</sup> Importantly, there is also no evidence that participants in the control group accessed either the training or the grants. What is more, the low geographic concentration of program participants makes spill‐over effects unlikely. Hence, control group outcomes can plausibly be regarded as counterfactual outcomes for beneficiaries in the absence of the program.

The second stage of the selection process decided which _de facto_ treatment participants of the original treatment group received. Since the cancellation of the program was not planned, this process was not systematically controlled. Among the original treatment group participants reached through the endline survey, we have three _de facto_ groups. The “Training but no grant” group consists of the 408 individuals that had not accessed their grants when erupting violence forced the program to terminate in late 2015, the “Training and grant” group consists of the 210 individuals who successfully accessed the grant, and the “Non‐compliers” group consists of 132 individuals who did not attend the training and therefore could not access the grant.<sup>9</sup> The assignment process to these de facto treatment arms poses some challenges for identification. Participants had no reason to anticipate that the grant disbursement might be frozen in the future, the assignment to “Training and grant” and “Training, but no grant” was partly random. However, participants who tried to access the grant right after the training had a higher chance of receiving it than those who waited, so individual characteristics of the participants might have created some self‐selection into these two groups.

To assess the degree of endogenous selection into the “training but no grant” and “training and grant” groups, we examine the balance on covariates between these two groups using the baseline data. We find that older, married participants with larger families were more likely to access the grants (see Table 3). In addition, participants who received the grant were more likely to already own a business and hold a bank account, reported higher consumption levels and reached higher ranks in our literacy

> 8 A further balance test between attritors and non‐attritors from the overall study showed some systematic differences (Appendix table A1.2): at the 1 percent significance level attritors were less likely to hold a formal bank account at baseline and had a lower educational level, and at the 5 percent significance level attritors had a lower food consumption, less formal and more informal debt, and came from smaller households with fewer children. We control for these differences as additional covariates in our regressions.

> 9 Attending the training program was a pre‐requisite to accessing the grant. Part of the training included financial literacy around opening and using the bank accounts, so only those participating had bank accounts opened for them.

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