Refugee Economies as Agricultural Growth Nodes
FEATURED BLOG
Refugee Economies as Agricultural Growth Nodes
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Feb 2026
Africa’s displacement reality is increasingly protracted, with significant economic implications. Almost 50 million displaced Africans live without stable housing, and because displacement largely occurs within the continent, camps and settlements increasingly operate as long-term local economies rather than temporary shelters. Oftentimes however, these economies are suppressed by the invisible borders of opportunity, investment pipelines, and risk perceptions. This is where the private sector comes in: not to replace government or humanitarian systems, but to play a distinct role of pricing risk, building supply chains, and expanding choices for displaced and host communities, especially through agriculture that can deliver returns.
Agriculture is one of the strongest proof points for market-building in displacement settings. It is a sector where demand, production, and trade can be structured into coherent, investable value chains. The opportunity is not just more food. It is the set of businesses around production, including inputs and services, aggregation, storage, processing, logistics, and reliable offtake, that link displaced and host producers into the same commercial loops. Constraints like informality, and weak infrastructure are real, but they are workable with the right model design. With strong intermediaries and risk-sharing, capital can move beyond subsistence into scalable firms that grow jobs, productivity, and trade.
The question is no longer whether displacement economies can host investable activity, the real question is what makes these markets legible enough for firms to enter, learn, and scale. In practice, the enabling agenda clusters around three claims.
One, de-risking is the core condition for bankability. De-risking, in this context, means reducing the two risks that keep capital away even when demand and labor are present: market risk (is there a predictable buyer at a predictable price?), and early-stage capital risk (who absorbs the first losses while the model learns?). This is why demand anchors and risk-sharing matter. In Uganda’s West Nile region, where over a million refugees live alongside host communities, Omia Agribusiness Development Group, a Ugandan-based agribusiness firm, is structured around predictable procurement demand and regional trade. Refugee cash assistance sustains local food demand, while neighboring countries import Ugandan grain by the ton.
Institutional partners such as the World Food Programme support this model through grant funding, subsidized finance, and climate-smart infrastructure that de-risk early-stage risk. In Kenya’s Turkana region, grant support from programs like the Kakuma Kalobeyei Challenge Fund subsidizes starter kits for refugees, making them affordable while covering upfront deployment costs. The Hive commits to buyback all output, eliminating market risk for beekeepers. Modern hive design then reduces production volatility by making output more predictable: each colony can yield over 60 kg of honey annually with up to six harvests per year.
Secondly, the investable opportunity sits beyond production, because revenue is captured in the value chain around the farm gate. In thin markets, growing more is rarely the constraint; the constraint is converting dispersed production into dependable volume, quality, and cashflow. That is why inputs, aggregation, processing, and structured buying are the business model.
Omia operationalizes this through branded "Farmer Hubs" that sell seeds, fertilizers, and tools while providing agronomic training, creating recurring revenue as farmers return each season for supplies. On the output side, Omia's trading arm (Omia Foods) guarantees harvest buyback, then processes and transports crops to food-deficit markets in South Sudan and DR Congo. The profit logic is straightforward: buy surplus locally, sell into premium cross-border markets with structural demand. The numbers validate the model: one recent pilot with over 500 farmers generated $24,000 in crop sales over six months, with the average farming group earning roughly $1,000 per harvest, which is meaningful income in a settlement economy.
Since launching in 2018, Omia has scaled to five branch hubs and is now raising capital to enter Kampala and Juba. The Hive follows the same value-chain first logic through equipment sales and product sales: it provides starter kits (modern hives and tools) on a cost-recovery basis, then buys all harvested honey, propolis, and beeswax at fair market prices, processes, packages, and sells through branded outlets across Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. Depending on market trends, The Hive buys back at as high as $8 per kg, which is more than four times the cost of a litre of petrol.
Thirdly, working with locals is operational infrastructure. Displacement markets run on trust, social verification, and repeated transactions. Without trusted local delivery through agents, farmer groups, and continuous training, models face side-selling, dropouts, and quality inconsistency that destroy throughput. Omia builds this delivery layer through agronomic training embedded in its hubs, and through seasonal repeat purchasing that turns farmers into returning customers rather than one-off beneficiaries. The Hive reduces operational risk through community engagement: working with refugee groups and host leaders, it selects motivated participants and structures kits as investments.
Regular on-site training builds capacity and trust, lowering dropout rates. To date, The Hive has trained more than 2,000 refugee and host beekeepers since establishing a training center near Kakuma. At scale, each beekeeper could produce hundreds of kilograms annually, generating significant household income where aid dependency was the baseline.
Put together, these claims point to a clear investment logic. The constraint is rarely demand or labor availability; it is the absence of firms that can de-risk execution, monetize the value chain beyond production, and build trusted local delivery that turns participation into dependable volume and revenue. That is what converts refugee economies from suppressed markets into agricultural growth nodes.