Liaum, Kenya – Windsweps and Remote, located in cattle lands of the northwest of Kenya, Kakuma was never destined to establish itself permanently.
It became one of the most famous refugee fields in Africa by accident when people who escape from calamity in countries like South Sudan, Ethiopia and Congo arrived.
More than three decades after his first stores appeared in 1992, Kakuma houses 300,000 refugees. Many trust the help to survive. Some recently Police with the police about food rations and support.
Now the Kenyan government and humanitarian agencies have created an ambitious plan for Kakuma to evolve to a city.
Although it remains under the United Nations Management, Kakuma has been networksign of a municipality, one that local government officials will later administer.
It is part of a broader objective in Kenya and other parts of the incorporation of refugees more closely in local populations and the change of a prolonged dependence on help.
Refugees in Kakuma will eventually have to fend for themselves, living from their income instead of helping. The closest city is eight hours by car.
Such self -sufficiency is not easy. Few refugees can become Kenyan citizens. A 2021 law recognizes its right to work in formal employment, but only a small minority can do so.
Forbidden to maintain cattle due to the arid environment and the inability to wander widely, and cannot cultivate due to the lack of adequate water, many refugees come to administer a business as their only option.
Starting companies require capital, and interest rates in banks in Kakuma are usually around 20%. Few refugees have the guarantee and documentation necessary to obtain a loan.
Denying access to credit is a tremendous waste of human capital, said Julienne Oyler, who directs Inkomoko, a charity that provides financial training and low -cost loans to African companies, mainly in communities affected by displacement.
“We found that refugee business owners actually have the characteristics that make world -class businessmen,” he said.
“They are resistant. They are ingenious. They have access to networks. They have adaptability. In some way, what refugees have had to actually happen is a very good owner of a business.”
Other available options include microlomolastics from other collective aid or financing groups by groups led by refugees. However, the sums involved are usually insufficient for all new less small companies.
One of Inkomoko’s clients in Kakuma, Adele Mubalama, directed seven young children, six of his and an abandoned 12 -year -old girl who found on his way, on a dangerous trip to the camp through four countries after the family was forced to leave Congo in 2018.
At the camp it took six months to find her husband, who had fled two months before, and six more discover how to make a living.
“It was difficult to know how to survive,” said Malama. “We didn’t know how to get a job and there were no commercial opportunities.”
After registering in a tailoring course with a Danish charity, he found himself doing fabric masks during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Able to borrow inkomoko in the middle of the rate charged by the banks, it expanded, assuming 26 employees and buying new sewing machines. Last year he obtained a gain of $ 8,300, a large amount when many refugees live with subsidies or coupons of approximately $ 10 or less per month.
Another beneficiary is Mesfin Getahun, a former soldier who fled from Ethiopia for Kakuma in 2001 after helping students who had protested against the government. He has cultivated his “Jesús Is Lord” stores, who sell everything, edible to motorcycles, to Kakuma’s largest retail chain. That is thanks in part to $ 115,000 in inkomoko loans.
Trade with other cities is also essential. Inkomoko has linked refugee companies with suppliers in Eldoret, a city of 300 miles (482 kilometers) south, to cut expensive intermediaries and help embed Kakuma in Kenya’s economy.
Some question the vision that Kakuma becomes a prosperous and self -sufficient city.
Rahul Oka, associate research professor at the University of Notre Dame, said he lacks resources, particularly water, and infrastructure to maintain a viable economy that can depend on local production.
“An organic economy cannot be rebuilt to social engineering,” said Oka, who has studied economic life in Kakuma for many years.
Bidirectional trade is still almost non -existent. Suppliers send second -hand food and clothes to Kakuma, but trucks on the return trip are usually empty.
And the vast majority of refugees lack the freedom to move to another part of Kenya, where the works are easier to find, said Freddie Carver of Odi Global, a group of London -based experts.
Unless this is addressed, the solutions that offer greater opportunities to refugees cannot offer a significant transformation for most of them, he said.
“If it goes back to 20 years, much speech on refugee rights were legal protections, the right to work, the right to remain in a country permanently,” said Carver. “Now these are livelihoods and self -sufficiency. The emphasis is both in the opportunities that the issue of rights eclipses. There must be greater balance.”
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