Swedish furniture company IKEA has announced a Sh3.3 billion fund to support urban refugees in Nairobi and Kampala start businesses and access financial capital.
The large scale initiative is dubbed ‘Refugees in East Africa: Boosting Urban Innovation for Livelihoods Development’ (Re: Build), targets 20,000 refugees’.
It seeks to achieve this through apprenticeships, business grants, mentorships, skills training and certifications.
“With the IKEA Foundation’s investment and the International Rescue Committee (IRC’s) IRC’s expertise in transforming livelihoods, this program is also a solid example of the private sector partnering with the international community to produce innovative solutions to some of the World’s largest problems,” IRC’s chief executive David Miliband said.
This is the second project between IRC and IKEA after the ‘Building Incomes and Leveraging Livelihoods for Youth (BILLY)’ that Nairobi’s refugees and young Kenyans benefited through skills training and job support to increase incomes.
“It is critical to include refugees in East Africa in livelihood investments and we are excited to be partnering again with the IRC to fill the research and programming gaps that exist among this growing population,” IKEA Foundation CEO Per Heggenes said.
The number of refugees in Kenya as at July 2020 was 494,289 with the majority being from Somalia (54 per cent), South Sudan (25 per cent), Congo (nine per cent) and Ethiopia (six per cent).
Majority of them are forced to work in informal sector due to high level of unemployment, lack of documentation and access to financial services and skills as well as language barriers.
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