Turning Skills Into Startups Is A Dream Hard To Achieve For Women In Kakuma Refugee Camp
A women-led family of artists in Kakuma Refugee Camp recounts their journey and the support they require to turn their skills into successful careers
By Khatra, Khadija* and Shazia* as told to Devyani Nighoskar and Hafsa Ali, with insights from Samuel Hall’s research
This first-person narrative is a part of our ‘Everyday Women Leaders Series’ which highlights everyday women leaders, their stories, and their hopes. Read the other stories here.
Khatra
‘One of my most significant achievements in life is raising daughters who are creative and ambitious enough to get things done despite the circumstances we live in. We have had a difficult life.
We arrived in Kenya in 2006 and were placed at the Dadaab Refugee Camp. My brother and father were killed in the war while I escaped kidnapping. My house was set on fire and my daughter suffered severe burns — and that is why I escaped with my children.
It took me a long time to get over everything I had seen — in the war, in the journey from Somalia to Kenya. However, I knew I had to move on. I was an asylum seeker when I arrived and would soon be a refugee — but I wanted to be much more. I wanted to set an example for my young daughters and provide for them.
So I enrolled in a skill development class offered by an international non-government organisation in Dadaab. It was perhaps the best decision I made. I learned the art of tie and dye — a skill that I truly enjoy, a skill that has given me a livelihood, and a skill that has started to bring me some recognition. I have a certificate for it as well. The best part is it encouraged my daughters to take up such pursuits — they are quite entrepreneurial as well.
Two of my daughters are henna artists, and one is a hairdresser cum make-up artist. We all work here in the Kakuma camp. We came here in 2011.
It takes me 20–30 minutes to tie and dye one piece of cloth. I sell the clothes for 600 shillings each in a wholesale market in the camp. However, as the cost of raw materials is too high, the profit margin is low — only 100 shillings for each piece.
To make ends meet, I also sell ice and cold drinks on the side. A Somali woman I knew in the camp had helped me buy a fridge.
Not Just Skills, But Also Infrastructure
I would like to strengthen my tie and dye work. However, for refugee women like us, getting loans to start a small business is hard. Beyond the integral skills training work, we need support, like seed money to start off. To make money, we need money.
Even for my daughters and the other girls they work with, the biggest challenge has been the lack of infrastructure for them to properly put their skills into action. We continue to hustle, but only some have that privilege.
My dream is to be more independent, to be able to stand up for myself and for my daughters, support my goals, and support their dreams — that would be an even more significant achievement.’
Leveraging The Potential of Women & Young Migrants
Samuel Hall’s evaluation of the EU Trust Fund in Kenya shows that limited literacy and lack of education among host and refugee communities are also barriers to participation. For example, women with limited knowledge of English cannot meet the requirement to apply for certain vocational positions where it is the language of instruction.
Throughout the qualitative and quantitative data collected for this evaluation in Kakuma and Kalobeyei, by far the most common barriers mentioned to achieving self-reliance in livelihoods and improving economic well-being were the limits of the market system itself to offer opportunities to those who had the necessary skills. This is the combined result of complex legal and political barriers that block freedom of movement and make it difficult to open a formalised business, along with a scarcity of opportunities for capital access — desperately needed by many to get their ideas off the ground and create a truly integrated refugee-host economic system for the benefit of the wider regional and Kenyan economy.
Moreover, it was found that across vocational and business training programs, participants have gained a more diversified skill set, an additional source of income; the training often has been noted to be insufficient for achieving broader socio-economic improvements for individuals in the longer termwhich rely on factors beyond the training such as access to capital, legal validation, and a more supportive business ecosystem.
Trainees need to be supported beyond their training course and assisted in opening a business — for the skill development to contribute to successful socio-economic integration — integral to both protection and sustainable re-integration.
The Way Forward: Gender Transformative Approaches For Integration
Young people who have been forced to migrate are particularly marginalised in their current environment: they are not only socially and economically vulnerable but also psychologically and often legally so. Yet, in a global context marked by crises, Samuel Hall’s scoping paper with KNOMAD on Youth, Migration and Development — A New Lens For Critical Time reveals the world’s youth, and young migrants, as resourceful actors of development.
Young migrants bring with them creativity and innovation, and are often risk takers, prepared to seize opportunities with a greater awareness of tomorrow’s challenges. Many like Shazia and Khadija have a thirst for equality and peace as well as the belief that problems are only the beginnings of future solutions to which they can, and must, contribute.
How can we leverage this potential?¹
- Build A Supportive Ecosystem: Beyond skills development and vocational training, a wider spectrum of services are crucial to the long-term integration of migrants. This includes expanding the scope of the market system to build an ecosystem for MSMEs in wider geographic areas (including cross-border) and ensure that generational needs are considered.
- Support inclusive advocacy and policy change for financial inclusion and access to capital through fund-matching capital, capacity building of local institutions (including banks) and credit to allow refugees to access capital and obtain a business license, as well as a plot of land. This includes legal assistance to refugees to obtain and/or renew formal identification to access market opportunities as well as opportunities
- Encourage Associations: support the formation of self-help groups amongst women to pool resources but also public-private partnerships that can help create market spaces for refugees in camps. The involvement of private partners can support public actors to steer intervention strategies towards investments and actions that are grounded in local market systems assessments to better identify sustainable livelihood opportunities. We also need to develop programmes to encourage association between refugees and hosts in cooperatives for small-scale business/cottage industries, for greater mutualisation, value for money, and more favourable loans or credit.
*Some names have been changed to protect identity
¹The recommendations are drawn from Samuel Hall’s Evaluation of the EU Trust Fund in Kenya, KNOMAD Scoping Paper on Youth Migration and Development, A New Lens for Critical Time and SH team’s contribution on Forced Migration Review’s Socio-economic integration: towards solutions for displaced people and host communities
