Across East Africa, refugees and displaced people are building businesses and supporting their households and communities, despite significant barriers to sustainable livelihoods. At the same time, host communities are often affected by economic instability, displacement, and constrained public services.
Entrepreneurship and small business development play a critical role in generating income, fostering resilience, and strengthening social cohesion.
Through its partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, Inkomoko aims to promote inclusive economic growth by enabling young people and displaced populations to build enterprises and access dignified and fulfilling work.
We generated rigorous, credible and practical evidence to support learning and strategic decision-making for the partnership, ultimately deepening understanding of how the programme is contributing to entrepreneurs’ businesses and livelihoods.
Our role
Itad was commissioned to conduct an independent mid-term review of the Inkomoko-Mastercard Foundation partnership. Our evaluation addressed the progress, performance and emerging outcomes to understand:
- what works well
- where challenges remain
- how the programme can strengthen its impact and sustainability at scale in a rapidly changing humanitarian and development landscape
Alongside this, we developed participant stories of change to illustrate pathways of impact, and lessons, at individual, household and community levels.
Together, the review and stories provided robust evidence and human-centred insights to inform strategic decision-making, support adaptive management and capture lived experiences of change for refugee economic inclusion.
Our approach
Working closely with Inkomoko, the Mastercard Foundation and in-country data firms, we delivered a mixed-methods, utilisation-focused review aligned with the programme’s theory of change.
We assessed performance across four core dimensions:
- programme design and implementation
- outcomes and impact
- scale-up
- organisational capabilities
We partnered with in-country data firms to gather quantitative data through enterprise and employee surveys, complemented by qualitative insights from a wide range of stakeholders. Throughout the process, we applied a gender-responsive and inclusive lens, with particular attention to refugees, displaced people, women, and youth.
Methods
We applied a rigorous, mixed-methods and learning-oriented approach to generate credible evidence and support real-time use of findings, including:
- Theory-based review design: we grounded the review in Inkomoko’s theory of change, examining how activities, outputs, and outcomes connect to longer-term livelihood and systems-level change.
- Mixed-methods data collection: we combined large-scale quantitative surveys with in-depth qualitative research, including key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and workshops with participants, staff, partners, and sector stakeholders.
- Partnership with local research firms: we worked with in-country data collection partners to ensure high-quality fieldwork and ethical engagement with participants.
- Gender-responsive and inclusive analysis: we embedded gender and social inclusion considerations throughout the review, with focused analysis of outcomes for refugees and displaced people, women, youth, and people with disabilities.
- Utilisation-focused learning processes: we prioritised learning and use by engaging stakeholders throughout the process, sharing emerging findings, and facilitating reflection and sense-making to support ownership and the development of relevant recommendations.
- Human-centred impact storytelling: alongside technical analysis, we developed participant stories of change using interview data and triangulation processes, bringing evidence to life through credible, ethically produced narratives.
Our findings
We found that Inkomoko has made strong progress in delivering business support and financial services to refugee and host community entrepreneurs across its operating countries.
At mid-term, the programme was on track to meet its overall outreach and service delivery targets, with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs reached and significant volumes of finance disbursed.
We identified clear evidence of enterprise growth and livelihood improvements:
- Average business revenues and employment levels increased over time, and participants reported strengthened business skills, confidence, and financial stability.
- Many entrepreneurs experienced positive household-level changes, including improved food security, housing, and reduced reliance on humanitarian assistance.
- The stories of change further illustrated how tailored business support and access to finance translated into greater independence, dignity and social recognition.
At the same time, the review highlighted important challenges:
- Progress on job creation and inclusion of refugees, youth, and start-up businesses was slower than anticipated, and outcomes varied across countries.
- Many enterprises continued to face external shocks and market constraints, highlighting the importance of continued efforts to strengthen business resilience, access to appropriate finance, and long-term pathways to sustainability.
Outcomes and impact
This review came at an important inflection point for Inkomoko and the Mastercard Foundation as they looked to strengthen and scale existing programming, whilst considering how to respond to shifts in the humanitarian and funding landscape.
Our findings have informed a set of practical recommendations focused on strengthening inclusion, refining financial services, deepening market and policy engagement, and clarifying pathways to systems-level change.
Participant stories of change
Two stories of change were developed in collaboration with Mastercard Foundation and Inkomoko:
Read ‘Igniting the light: Sekina’s journey to economic independence (pdf)
Read ‘Driving mobile money innovation and empowering women entrepreneurs in Sudan’ (pdf)
Read a short version of Sekina’s story on Inkomoko’s website
