Extending Micro Finance Services to Refugees and Host Communities in Kenya

In December 2019, the ILO working closely with UNHCR organized a scoping mission to the two refugee camps in Kenya (Kakuma and Dadaab) to enable five Kenyan Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) to assess business viability in the refugee hosting areas.

News | 01 April 2020
Refugees and host communities in Kakuma and Dadaab are key players in the Kenya's informal economy. They face challenges similar to other informal economy players, albeit in a greater scale. One of the persistent challenges is lack of access to financial services to support their businesses.

In December 2019, the ILO working closely with UNHCR organized a scoping mission to the two refugee camps in Kenya (Kakuma and Dadaab) to enable five Kenyan Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) to assess business viability in the refugee hosting areas. They also sought to understand operations and business environment in the two camps. The MFI representatives participated in focus group discussions with a variety of business owners in the refugee camps, visited refugee owned businesses and held discussions with banks offering financial services in the targeted intervention areas.

Thanks to the visit, the five MFIs committed to explore modalities of extending financial services to refugees in the camps in the coming months. ILO will work with the MFIs to build their capacity on making micro finance work for refugees, and support them to develop appropriate products accessible to refugees and host communities.

Click here to see the photo gallery of the scoping mission (also below)