An innovative idea to contract a limited number of refugee and host community-run shops as distributors, and give a proportion of assistance to refugees in the form of mobile money to buy food of their choice has birthed and inspired a serial entrepreneurial spirit in Kakuma and Kalobeyei refugee camps in northern Kenya, that the World Food Programme (WFP) now estimates to be worth up to $56.6 million (Sh5.6 billion).
The goal has been to increase choice for refugees and nurture the food retail market, as opposed to distributing regular physical food ratios, according to a WFP report co-authored by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.
