The Amahoro Coalition on Thursday released a research report, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Africa’s $27B Displacement Market Opportunity”, that documents the economic scale of displacement across Africa and the commercial case for private sector investment in displacement-affected communities.
The report’s central finding is striking, as it indicates Africa’s displaced population generates income that is equal to an economy the size of Uganda’s GDP in the 2010s, and Zambia’s today.
All this, yet this population operates almost entirely without the financial infrastructure that any comparably sized economy would take for granted: no banking sector, no formal retail chains, and no structured access to credit.
“Africa’s displaced communities are not waiting for rescue. They are running businesses, farming land, and moving goods across borders, with almost none of the financial infrastructure available to everyone else. That gap is where the opportunity is” says Tito Mbathi, Head of Partnerships, Amahoro Coalition.
The report maps investment potential across five sectors: entrepreneurship, agriculture, finance, supply chain, andmanufacturing, withh primary data, market sizing, and case studies drawn from working models already generating commercial returns.
In partnership with dfcu Bank, one of Uganda’s leading financial institutions, Amahoro Coalition is working to translate the report’s findings into concrete financial products and pathways for displaced entrepreneurs across Uganda’s settlement corridors. dfcu Bank’s 57-branch network and established agribusiness and SME portfolio make it uniquely positioned to reach the displacement economy this report documents.
Maryann Wanjiku Michuki, Chief Business Solutions & Marketing Officer reacts to the report details.
“At dfcu, we believe financial inclusion must extend to every enterprising community with the ambition and ability to build sustainable livelihoods. This report reinforces what we see across Uganda: displaced people are not only participants in the economy, they are entrepreneurs, farmers, customers, and partners in growth. Through our work with Amahoro Coalition, we are committed to supporting practical financial solutions that unlock access to credit, markets, and enterprise development for refugees and host communities alike,” Maryann Wanjiku Michuki, Chief Business Solutions & Marketing Officer.
Uganda: The Clearest Proof Point in Africa
Uganda hosts more refugees than any other country in Africa, over 1.7 million people, and its land-based self-reliance model has become the continent’s most cited example of what is possible when policy creates the conditions for economic participation. Uganda demonstrates that the constraint on displaced people’s economic participation is not capacity or willingness, it is access. Where land, credit, and market linkages have been unlocked, commercial viability has followed.
The Scale of the Invisible Nation
Kyangwali settlement is home to 83,558 refugees, more people than Uganda’s internationally known city of Entebbe. Yet Kyangwali is rarely recognized as an economy in national statistics or investment strategies. Most of Africa’s displaced live, economically speaking, off the grid. This invisibility is the product of documentation requirements, regulatory frameworks, and financial systems designed for settled populations, systems that exclude displaced people not because of any economic failure on their part, but because the systems were never designed to include them. The report argues that these design failures are, for first-mover investors, the opportunity.
Facts about Uganda
- 91% of refugees in Uganda live in settlements with allocated farm plots.
- 86,000+ refugees were trained in agriculture in 2023 alone.
- $200 million has been invested in refugee-hosting districts since 2017, benefiting both displaced and host communities.
- The Omia Agribusiness Farmer Hub model has served 49,000+ farmers and channeled over $413,000 directly to refugee and host farmers, operating commercially in corridors previously considered too high-risk.
Key Findings of the report
- $27 billion: estimated total annual income of Africa’s displaced populations (IDPs: $22.1bn; refugees: $5.6bn).
- 56% labour force participation rate among displaced populations in comparison to many African national averages.
- 12% entrepreneurship rate among displaced populations, ahead of many host community averages.
- 4 million displaced-led MSMEs estimated across the continent.
- 95%+ loan repayment rates at refugee-focused lenders, often outperforming host community microfinance benchmarks.
- $3.2 billion formal financial services opportunity if displaced populations achieved continental access parity.
- $2.4 billion agricultural opportunity if adequate land access were provided.
- 88% of African countries still lack formal land access frameworks for displaced populations.
Source: The Independent – Africa’s 43 million displaced people generate $27 billion a year
