Melssaw Gessesse contributed to this article.
At a small cafe near the border between Ethiopia and South Sudan, Mer Guek, 45, brews coffee and prepares breakfast and lunch. Her daughter, Nyabhan Tor, waits on customers who gather at plastic tables and chairs to chat over drinks and snacks. Mer opened her café in 2021 in front of her home, which is located inside the Jewi Refugee Camp. Found in the Gambela region of Ethiopia, the Jewi Refugee Camp hosts nearly 70,000 refugees like Mer. She and her children fled the civil war in South Sudan over ten years ago, and they have remained refugees in Ethiopia ever since.
Mer is one of many microentrepreneurs finding ways to earn a living for herself and her family while displaced from her home country. “I started a café as it requires less capital than opening shops,” she says. “Lack of working capital is the main challenge I face. The volume of material I can afford doesn’t match the demand.” While entrepreneurial activities are key to creating sustainable livelihoods in refugee communities, this vulnerable population faces significant hurdles and needs specialized assistance and financial resources to rebuild their lives.
Accion is working to enable women refugees to open and grow small businesses in their new communities in Ethiopia and Uganda, with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Taking an ecosystem approach and applying learnings from our research, Accion Advisory has connected local partners and innovative financial providers, bringing them together to provide digital platforms, financial resources, and training for refugee women.
In Ethiopia, Accion has partnered with Elebat, an established local last-mile enabler with a digital platform and access to financial institutions, and Unilever, whose Shakti program has shown great promise in supporting women entrepreneurs in rural parts of other countries. Through this partnership, we’re helping women refugees access digital tools and financial resources like credit — and the training they need to use these resources confidently and effectively. “It requires a lot of training, a lot of investment, to get the women to a place where they’re able and comfortable to use digital platforms,” says Kidist Tesfaye, Social Distribution Manager at Unilever. Participants receive training tailored to their needs, which addresses challenges like adapting to a different language and culture and navigating regulations and restrictions for refugees.
“The training helped me in a lot of ways, including learning how to sell more goods to my customers and knowing what to buy from suppliers according to the demands in the camp,” says Nya Buok, 39, who runs a grocery store in another part of the camp.
Nya sells pantry staples from her small shop, also in front of her home, to support herself and her eight children. An NGO helped her build the space, and she used her own money to purchase the initial inventory — items such as biscuits, juice, soup, candy, Knorr, sugar, and coffee beans. These fast-moving consumer goods sell quickly at low prices. She must frequently replenish her stock or risk losing her customers to another retailer inside or outside the camp.
“I don’t have enough capital to restock, and I use mostly my profit to meet ends at home for my kids,” she says. “I don’t have all that my customers want.” By connecting Nya to inclusive providers that can give her the support she needs, she can get credit to purchase inventory and fill her shelves based on customer needs that she analyzed in her training. “The credit also supported me to restock more products and get more profit,” she says. It takes more than one organization to drive effective solutions for the refugee community’s unique needs.
Mer and Nya are two of many women refugees in Ethiopia who are taking on entrepreneurial activities to sustain themselves and their families. Accion and our partners are committed to providing solutions and facilitating a supportive environment that will help their businesses continue to grow. “Working in this community requires a joint effort between all parties and stakeholders, including government and development organizations, financial service providers, and the private sector,” says Netsanet Raya, CEO at Elebat. Kidist agrees. “It’s not easy to operate on your own,” she says. “Partnerships are very critical for us to succeed.”
And they do have aspirations to grow. Mer wants to open a shop, not just an open-air cafe. Nya is thinking even further into the future: “In the future, I want to apply the training and experiences from this project to grow my own business,” she says. “I want to own a bigger business here in the camp or one day back home in South Sudan. And I want to help my kids and send them to school.”
Learn more about how refugee women in Uganda are strengthening their businesses and improving their economic well-being through digital marketplaces, inclusive financial services, and tailored training.
