Call for Expression of Interest: Enterprise Innovation Challenge for Jobs Creation for Refugees and Host Communities in Kenya Full Time NEW

Background

The ILO works to support and promote enterprise development because sustainable enterprises are key to ensuring jobs and wealth creation, and inclusive economies and societies. The ILO collaborates with its tripartite constituency of governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations to advance enterprise development in a manner that aligns enterprise growth with sustainable development objectives and the creation of productive employment and decent work. In Kenya, the ILO works with its tripartite partners to implement the Kenya Decent Work Programme which focuses on human capital development, sustainable economic growth, and social dialogue and tripartism to promote decent work and social justice.

Operational context of the assignment

The ILO is part of a Partnership on Inclusive Jobs and Education for Host Communities, Refugees and other Forcibly Displaced Persons, known as PROSPECTS. The Partnership is a multi-year programme, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, that brings together five agencies (ILO, World Bank, IFC, UNICEF, UNHCR) to devise collaborative and innovative approaches for inclusive job creation and education in contexts characterized by forced displacement. The programme encompasses four pillars, namely Education, Jobs, Protection and Infrastructure and operates in eight countries across East Africa, Horn of Africa and the Middle East employing an area-based approach, in which the partner agencies jointly focus their activities on selected regions in each country.

In Kenya, the programme is implemented in the refugee hosting counties of Turkana and Garissa, and nationally for policy interventions. Under the partnership, the ILO, together with IFC and World Bank, lead interventions to improve livelihoods and create jobs for host communities and refugees. PROSPECTS envisages that the economic inclusion pillar will trigger expansion of economic opportunities for refugees and host communities, and address barriers to access to labour markets resulting in increased jobs and promoting enhanced quality of work.

As of August 2025, Kenya is host to 860, 297 registered refugees and asylum seekers, with the Dadaab camps and Kakuma camps/Kalobeyei Settlement hosting 433, 761 and 309, 169, respectively. Refugees and host communities continue to face a challenging socio-economic landscape exuberated by hosting large numbers of refugees in an already strained environment. The refugee camps face diverse shocks ranging from degraded environment, frequent droughts, restricted refugee movement which hinders access to wage employment and trade activities, thin markets that are often distorted due to dominance of humanitarian aid, food price shocks, among others. The recent decline in humanitarian funding has worsened the already strained livelihood systems for both refugees and their host communities, further increasing the urgency for sustainable livelihood options to build resilience.

Despite the challenges, the Kenya Government has progressively sought to enhance refugee and host community social economic inclusion as supported by the Refugee Act of 2021. The Government also recently developed the Shirika plan, a multi-year initiative, aiming to promote the socioeconomic inclusion of refugees in Kenya by transforming camps into integrated settlements, integrating a community-wide development plan for both refugees and host communities. Among the Shirika plan pillars is sustainable economic development for both groups targeting to foster growth and shared prosperity.

With the limited opportunities for employment in the camps, refugees engage mostly in trade activities as a means of livelihoods, and many operate in the informal economy. This is not unique to refugees as host community members also operate in an economically constrained environment with limited productive resources and infrastructure to support large scale economic activities. However, there is a need for economic diversification into more productive sectors, including value addition to primary produce. Most of the businesses operating in the refugee hosting areas are either micro or small businesses and are often facing barriers to growth due to lack of access to business development services, access to finance and co-investments that are required to support their growth. To expand the economic opportunities and diversity into other sectors than trade, and in order catalyse employment creation in the refugee hosting counties, the ILO plans to implement an Enterprise Innovation Challenge (EIC) to facilitate growth of emerging and established enterprises who hold potential to grow the local economy and create employment opportunities. Through the Enterprise Innovation Challenge, the ILO envisages a challenge that can unlock enterprise innovation and employment creation through: –

• Supporting enterprises to grow, become environmentally sustainable create employment
• Enhancing access to financial services for enterprises in refugees and host communities
• Strengthening local market systems and improve their efficiency, such as backwards and forward linkages between enterprise run by refugees with local enterprises in the host community
• Strengthening of social solidarity economy (SSE) organisations / social enterprises that can apply enterprising principles for social and environmental impact
• Promoting access to social protection services for refugees and host communities as an embedded component of the facilitating of informal economic units to the formal economy and in the process address decent work deficits
• Improving working conditions and occupational health and safety (OSHs) practices.

Overall Goal of the Enterprise Innovation Challenge (EIC)

The overall goal of the challenge is to support the development of sustainable growth-oriented micro and small enterprises (MSEs) and to enable them to accelerate productivity and growth to create decent jobs in refugees and host communities in Turkana and Garissa.

Objective of the Enterprise Innovation Challenge

The primary objective of the EIC is to provide a selected number of refugees and host community businesses with technical, financial and non-financial support to start or grow innovative and sustainable business ideas with potential to create decent jobs for refugees and host communities. This will be achieved through the provision of business development services, linkage to investment opportunities, and strategic business coaching, among others. Besides this, the EIC will also serve to: –

1. Provide refugees and vulnerable host communities with immediate and direct financial and non-financial support that is needed to start and develop income-generating activities that have the potential to create jobs in the refugee hosting counties of Turkana and Garissa.
2. Provide entrepreneurship, business management, financial literacy and technical capacity building for a selection of refugees and host community members participating in the EIC through the provision of upskilling and reskilling training based on the needs assessment developed during the competition.
3. Link refugees and host community members with financial services providers and raise awareness about the business potential presented by the market segment, contributing to reducing the perceived risk by financial services providers and provide an outlet for refugees and host community to trust and be more confident towards the financial sector.
4. Demonstrate the viability of investing in sustainable enterprises by refugees and host communities to BDS and financial services providers as well as private sector actors that might be reluctant to see refugee settlements as a viable market for investment and service provision.
5. Enhance the decent work agenda by addressing decent work deficits through improving working conditions, access to social protection, and other fundamental principles.

Technical application

Through the technical application, the potential implementing partner must demonstrate capacity to cocreate the enterprise challenge, and experience in implementing similar interventions. The technical application is expected to demonstrate technical capacity, innovation and potential for scale, in addition but not limited to the following elements: –

• Description on how the partner will implement and manage the enterprise innovation challenge.
• Suggested business categories for the enterprise challenge, and their sizes.
• Proposal on how to ensure inclusion of refugees, host communities, women, pwds, youth and any other vulnerable categories.
• How to roll out and manage an online application process, supporting digitally challenged communities to ensure equal opportunity.
• Description of how the partner will promote the innovation challenge in the communities, including refugees and host communities.
• Known existing opportunities for leveraging to enrich the innovation challenge and deepen intervention. These could be government programmes, or even private sector.
• Description of some of the nonfinancial prizes that the implementing partner would propose to offer to the challenge winners.
• What steering structure would the partner propose, to ensure inclusivity and transparency.
• Post challenge support to enterprises who get selected for the challenge.

Implementing partner qualifications

The ILO is seeking an implementation partner to support the preparation, organization, and implementation of such the EIC in the refugee hosting counties of Turkana and Garissa.

1. The target partner for the EIC includes business development implementing partners and training institutions that aim to support enterprise growth, for instance – but not limited to – organizations such as innovation hubs, business incubators, and NGOs focused on training for economic empowerment, among others.
2. Eligible applicants must demonstrate their commitment and track record in supporting enterprise growth for refugees and host communities in Kenya and have a focus on business incubation and job creation.
3. Applicants should be legally recognized non-profit organization with contractual and registered capacity that has been in existence for at least three calendar years prior to the call deadline and that is registered in Kenya. This may include government agencies, social enterprises, education and training and business support institutions (incl. incubators), NGOs and civil society organizations and other research and educational institutions.
4. Demonstration of experience and capacity to use ILO BDS tools (Generate Your Business, Start Improve Your Business, Financial Education) will be an added advantage.

Screening and selection process

Stage 1: interested organisations will submit a technical proposal documenting experience and best proposals will be shortlisted by the ILO

Stage 2: Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to a joint information meeting where the ILO will explain the TORs in more detail, clarify expectations and answer questions.

Stage 3: Shortlisted organisations will then submit a revised proposal along with a financial proposal which will be assessed on best value for money after which the preferred provider will be selected for contracting.

Tagged as: International Labour Organization, Kenya