Stronger and more focused private sector interventions in Uganda’s refugee-hosting areas could deliver jobs, opportunities, and goods and services to several million underserved people, according to an IFC study of the country’s largest refugee-hosting areas published.
The study, conducted by IFC with Kampala-based consulting firm Asigma Advisory, is the first to consider the eight Ugandan refugee-hosting areas in the country’s Southwest and West Nile regions as a marketplace and to assess the size and potential private sector entry points.
The study, “The Consumer and Market Study in Southwest and West Nile Refugee-Hosting Areas in Uganda”, identified a $485 million consumer market measured as annual consumption expenditure, and the potential to develop agribusiness value chains, formalize access to finance, and engage private companies in the provision of solar products.
The study aims to provide data and other information for private sector companies seeking to expand into and support this substantial market.
“While humanitarian interventions are essential for refugee communities, the private sector can complement those activities and deliver jobs and opportunities to the forcibly displaced. This report also shows how private sector engagement in Uganda’s refugee settings can strengthen self-reliance and socio-economic integration between refugees and host communities,” said Amena Arif, IFC Country Manager for Uganda. “In Uganda, IFC works with the public and private sectors on innovative approaches to economic development.”
The Uganda study received funding and support from the Prospects Partnership, Financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.
“In order for refugees and host communities to build sustainable livelihoods, it is important to know where the opportunities in markets are, and make sure that companies— but also refugees and host communities—have adequate knowledge and skills to tap into this. This study is an important contribution to this,” said H. E. Karin Boven, Ambassador of the Netherlands to Uganda.
As part of the study, researchers surveyed 2,522 refugee and host-community households and collected data on household demographics, consumer expenditure and preferences, types of businesses, sources of income, and access to finance.
The surveyed districts are home to more than 1.1 million refugees from several neighboring countries, and 3.7 million host community members. Uganda hosts a total of 1.5 million people, the largest refugee population in Africa, and the fourth largest in the world.
IFC continues to broaden its efforts to support and help create markets in forced displacement populated areas, building on the 2018 “Kakuma as a Marketplace” report, which studied private sector possibilities in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee-hosting area.
