Refugee-led energy access
A guide to scaling solutions, for funders and the humanitarian sector.
See how support for refugee-led organisations can drive inclusive, sustainable economic development.
The challenge
120 million people live in refugee camps and settlements; ongoing conflict and crisis mean many of these people have called them home for decades.
Energy poverty brings these communities daily challenges – making it difficult or impossible to earn a living, stay healthy, study, or connect with loved ones and the wider world.
The vast majority of people living in refugee camps and settlements have no meaningful access to electricity.
Most households rely on firewood or charcoal for cooking – these fuels are inefficient, polluting, and contribute to deforestation. Women and girls are put at risk of sexual violence as they move far from their homes to find dwindling sources of firewood.
Humanitarian agencies are unable to meet the growing energy needs of households and businesses in displacement settings.
The solution
Proven solutions lie in the efforts and ingenuity of displaced people themselves.
A variety of refugee-led initiatives have shown how clean, affordable energy can be delivered where it’s needed most. Importantly, they can do so while supporting local economic growth and social development, in ways not possible through the top-down approaches that have traditionally dominated the humanitarian system.
These refugee-led initiatives include not-for-profits and businesses delivering social impact. However, in either case, such initiatives face many barriers in securing the funding needed to start or scale up such work.
By delivering appropriate finance to these organisations, or enabling the work it supports, funders and humanitarian sector partners can spark transformative impact in refugee communities. Doing so will accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 7 – universal clean energy for all – and numerous other SDGs.
This briefing explores the challenges facing refugees, and also the practical steps that can unlock inclusive finance and maximise its impact.
The briefing shares examples of the inspiring, proven solutions that can be scaled up or replicated by funder and stakeholder action. It draws on insights from the Ashden Award for Powering Refugees and Displaced People, and interviews with 20 stakeholders in the humanitarian energy sector – including numerous refugee-led organisations.
All stakeholders interviewed were working in East Africa, home to some of the world’s largest refugee camps – and some of its most exciting innovation. This briefing is firmly rooted in the experiences and views of refugee energy innovators, who have been extraordinarily generous in sharing their stories with Ashden.
The need for action – and the refugee innovators driving change
Urgent action is needed in the humanitarian energy sector if we are to meet global climate and development targets.
If refugees and displaced people made up the population of a single country, it would be the 12th or 13th largest in the world.
94% of forcibly displaced people living in camps have no meaningful access to electricity.
81% of forcibly displaced people rely on firewood or charcoal for cooking.
Many refugee camps are in remote locations, far beyond the reach of electricity grids and with little prospect of connection in the near future. It is here that the challenge of powering the camps is greatest. Most electricity comes from diesel generators. Fueling these is estimated to cost over $100million in fuel a year, with annual CO2 emissions of 200,000tons. Recent efforts to bring clean energy to camps have included a €21million investment by the German Federal Government into the Decarbonising Humanitarian Energy Multi Partner Trust Fund.
To date, investments in ‘greening’ humanitarian energy have focused on agency infrastructure, including offices, residential compounds, clinics, and schools, as these are regarded to be the largest consumers of energy, and the most easily identifiable cost centres. But refugee households could be spending as much as $2.1billion on energy each year, without accounting for humanitarian agencies’ costs to hand out rations of firewood. With so many people living in displacement settings, such vast sums still only equate to the most basic levels of energy provision – displaced families are estimated to spend around a year on cooking and lighting, but this provides them less than four hours of energy a day.
As far as energy is concerned, humanitarian provision is generally been limited to NGOs supplying firewood for cooking, and basic torches and lanterns for lighting. Advances in solar technology have led to falling costs which now mean that small solar-powered lighting devices can be bought by directly be refugees for around $10 – while more complex solar home systems, which power lights and other devices such as phone chargers, radios and laptops, can be bought for around $150.
While these are still significant sums for many refugees, increasing affordability has been a key factor in enabling market-based solutions to bring much-needed clean energy products to refugees.
But energy for cooking remains an enormous challenge. Cooking on open fires and rudimentary cookstoves creates dangerous air pollution, with women and girls at greatest risk, as cooking and household chores continues to fall mainly on them.
On top of this, the small rations of firewood provided by humanitarian agencies and NGOs are rarely sufficient, and many households gather their own from around the camps. The situation has led to catastrophic deforestation of areas around many settlements, contributing to climate change and environmental degradation. This forces already-vulnerable households into even greater fuel poverty as they struggle to access progressively scarcer resources and puts women and girls at particularly acute risk of attack and sexual violence, as they walk further and further from their homes to find of firewood.
The opportunity for refugee-led organisations
A growing number of refugee-led organisations and entrepreneurs are addressing the energy access challenge with inclusive, socially impactful solutions. These often harness the entrepreneurship opportunities in refugee settlements which already host large informal markets for charcoal and firewood with many businesses selling torches, batteries, cookstoves, and low cost electrical appliances.
For example, the Kakuma-Kalobeyi Integrated Settlement in Kenya – home to 200,000 refugees – has over 2,000 refugee-owned businesses, and its total annual household consumption is more than $56million.
With capital of a few hundred dollars, it is relatively easy for refugees to launch ‘clean energy businesses’ centred on selling electrical appliances, or doing tailoring or hair dressing powered by a small solar home system. However, apart from retailers of low cost energy products, refugee-led energy access initiatives – whether enterprises or not-for-profit – often struggle to access funding to start up or scale. This largely because energy projects are technically complex and capital intensive, needing significant expertise and thousands of dollars of equipment or inventory.
But unlocking appropriate finance could spark transformative change in refugee communities. Examining successful enterprises and initiatives shows us the power of refugee-led initiatives to boost energy access while also delivering a multitude of other benefits, from improving livelihoods and economic activity to addressing protection challenges and environmental degradation. But this examination also highlights the barriers they and their peers have faced, and how these can be overcome.
Live in Green: boosting health and incomes, with efficient stoves and cleaner-burning fuels
Uganda’s Live in Green has distributed over 6,000 stoves in the Kyaka II Camp – as well as educating 12,000 displaced people on clean cooking and environmental protection, and supporting the launch of 22 micro-enterprises.
Read more about Live in Green
Live in Green produces efficient cookstoves and cleaner-burning fuels at the Kyaka II Refugee Settlement in Uganda. The enterprises collects household and agricultural waste, separating plastics and selling these to recycling companies.
Organic waste is turned into briquettes for cooking fuel – two tons are made every day – reducing tree felling in the area. Live in Green’s range of stoves includes a forced-air gasification model, which is powered by a small solar panel and battery, and can massively reduce the amount of fuel needed to cook.
Live in Green is led by founder Solomon Bhaghabhonerano, a refugee who grew up in the settlement, who says he has observed catastrophic deforestation in the area since he arrived. He launched Live in Green with his own savings and has ambitious expansion plans – including scaling up the stove and briquette production capacity – but cites lack of finance as his biggest obstacle to growth.
Solomon was only able to access a start-up grant of $10,000 from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) by partnering with a larger Ugandan NGO, Nsamizi. Despite having been registered for nearly a decade, and having a track record of significant impact, Live in Green has had to rely on remittances, earned income, gifts in kind, and one or two grants of about $1,000.
Solomon says:
“Many investment calls are for $500,000 or above – funders look at Live in Green and say we are not ready for this level of investment, so grants of $50-$100,000 are more realistic. But for grants, there is competition from thousands of other applicants who are not refugee-led.
“Once you see the eligibility criteria and all the documentation and impressive proposals that funders are looking for, you often don’t finish reading the call or bother to apply because you feel you can never meet these requirements.”
Okapi Green Energy: minigrid powers refugee entrepreneurs
Okapi Green Energy’s solar minigrid serves affordable, renewable energy to 200 customers in Kakuma III Refugee Camp, Kenya. These customers include businesses such computer cafes, maize-mills, and food sellers – who use Okapi Green Energy’s clean energy to power fridges in their shops.
Read more about Okapi Green Energy
In contrast to the camp’s many unregulated diesel-powered minigrids, Okapi Green Energy’s service is registered and licensed, with accurate metering for customers. This is partly the result of requirements from funders USADF and BDB – showing how formal grants and financing for refugee-led initiatives can lead to fair pricing for consumers.
Okapi Green Energy was founded by refugee Vasco Hamisi, and has grown out of the work of his organisation Resilience Action International (RAI). RAI was able to secure over $150,000 in grants for the solar minigrid thanks to its status as a registered NGO, with an official bank account, and track record of managing small grants from national and international funders. Okapi Green Energy was established in 2020 as a wholly owned subsidiary of RAI. Vasco says that without RAI’s history and financial status, securing this level of funding would have been impossible.
Funding from GIZ and MasterCard Foundation has allowed Okapi Green Energy to conduct feasibility studies, train local young people as solar technicians, and strengthen governance, financial management and corporate policies.
In 2023, Okapi Green Energy announced a joint venture with Renewvia, a US-based minigrid developer, to expand the solar minigrid to serve a further 15,000 people in Kakuma III. Renewvia will deploy a mixture of grants, results-based financing and other concessional financing for the construction of the grid, while Okapi Green Energy will be responsible for operation, maintenance and customer payments.
Praising Okapi Green Energy’s partners, Vasco says:
“Most funders and investors don’t understand the refugee context or the constraints we face, and are very reluctant to fund RLOs unless there is a non-refugee partner organisation also involved in the project, which can add costs and create friction.”
Inkomoko: loans and support tailored to refugee-led organisations
Inkomoko is the largest lender to refugee entrepreneurs in Africa. It overcomes barriers by easing its lending requirements for displaced people, giving extra support to applicants, and employing refugee staff.
Read more about Inkomoko
Inkomoko delivers programmes in five East African countries, with a particular focus on refugee communities. Alongside its loans Inkomoko provides financial literacy, business and IT training for ‘idea stage’ entrepreneurs, and business development support for established entities. Borrowers must take part in training and receive business support to qualify for the organisation’s low-cost loans – Inkomoko believes this drives their high repayment rate.
Inkomoko has designed it’s work to respond directly to some the barriers faced by refugee entrepreneurs. It supports them to complete forms, and visits shortlisted first-time loan applicants to understand how they operate. The lender has also waived many collateral requirements for them access larger loans, keeping them in place for most non-refugee borrowers. And it employs people from refugee communities to ensure different groups hear about their services, rather than relying on online outreach.
Inkomoko would like to see more refugee-led enterprises supported by direct investments rather than grants, as this builds markets and encourages accountability. But its own lending does not provide the amounts usually needed by clean energy initiatives, saying there is need for other partners to provide capacity building on a wider range of technical skills to give lenders greater confidence to back energy entrepreneurs.
UNHCR Refugee-Led Innovation Fund: flexible, accessible support
The fund is open exclusively to refugee-led organisations, from anywhere in the world. It offers grants of up to $45,000, to be spent over 12 to 18 months. Its terms and processes have been designed with displaced people in mind.
UNHCR Refugee-Led Innovation Fund
Work in any theme or sector is eligible for grants from the Refugee-Led Innovation Fund. Most grants given since the fund’s launch have enabled livelihoods projects, or those supporting safety and protection for women and girls in displacement settings.
UNHCR promotes the fund through its country offices and local partners. A brief first stage application can be submitted in any language. UNHCR country officers visit shortlisted applicants to assess their work, and ensure that the project is genuinely refugee led. If the application progresses to the next stage, UNHCR staff can help applicants complete their submission. The team making the final selection is supported by an advisory board comprising people with lived experience of displacement.
Applicants do not have to be registered organisations, or have organisational bank accounts – in some situations payments can be made to personal bank accounts or those of partner organisations, provided there is proof the partner’s leadership has approved this. UNHCR can also make purchases and payments on behalf of refugee-led organisations where they do not have the necessary bank accounts. The team allow some day-to-day reporting and communication to be done via WhatsApp rather than email, and its country staff visit projects regularly for monitoring and reporting, and to help grantees with project implementation.
African Youth Action Network: switching communities on to solar cooking
Collaborating with international partners, this local organisation will support refugees to enjoy the benefits of solar-powered cookstoves.
African Youth Action Network (AYAN)
African Youth Action Network (AYAN) is a Ugandan refugee-led organisation, founded in 2015. It has recently launched a partnership with NGOs Last Mile Climate and Mercy Corps to promote solar electric cooking in the Kiryandongo and Bidibidi settlements. Although the upfront cost of appliances is high (estimated to be $500), the consortium will work with Vision Fund, a micro-finance institution, so that refugee households can pay for the cooker in instalments over a period of 12-24 months. There are no fuel costs for the cooker, so the monthly repayments are priced to be less than the equivalent cost that a household would spend on charcoal or firewood, if purchased from local sellers.
AYAN will lead on the awareness and sensitisation with refugee households, so that they can learn how to use the solar electric cookers, made by ecoca at a site in Bidibidi refugee settlement. AYAN will start by working with 50 households to pilot the stoves on the micro-finance scheme, and start to build demand in the community. They will work with ecoca’s distribution team to serve as the local distribution partner in Kiryandongo after this pilot phase.
Challenges faced by refugee-led clean energy initiatives
1. Exclusion from decision making
The humanitarian system is driven by a ‘protect and provide’ mentality, where governments and humanitarian agencies establish a camp then pay NGOs to meet peoples’ basic needs such as water, food, and shelter. Refugees are rarely involved in deciding what will be provided, or who will provide it. In the sphere of energy access (as in other areas), this leads to the purchase of technologies and ‘solutions’ that do not meet refugee needs. Decision makers also routinely overlook the capacity of local refugee-led organisations to deliver energy access and simultaneously boost economic growth.
2. Lack of refugee-centered financing initiatives
Very few funding initiatives are reserved exclusively for refugee-led organisations. Instead, these organisations are left competing with a wide range of local, national and international organisations – often better resourced and connected – for finance. Criteria rarely take account of the challenges faced by refugee-led organisations. Grant and financing initiatives may have specific allocations for NGOs, civil society groups, local SMEs and other types of organisation, but not for those led by displaced people.
3. Weight given to written applications disadvantages refugees
Funding application processes often give more weight to written proposals than applicants’ track records. English is rarely the first language of refugees, and many are inexperienced in communicating the impact of their work or writing proposals – and cannot afford to hire consultants to do this for them. One respondent said they had secured support from funders who had seen their work on the ground, but never from online applications or proposals.
4. Funders and investors see refugee-led initiatives as high-risk
Energy projects are seen as expensive and risky in any environment, let alone those that are small and led by refugees. Contributing factors include data shortages, and a lack of awareness amongst funders and investors about which business models can deliver energy access in refugee camps.
5. Requirements for documentation
Refugee-led organisations and their staff can find it difficult or impossible to provide registration documents, bank accounts, audit trails and annual reports. Displacement may also leave refugees unable to share evidence of their qualifications or experience, making it difficult to evidence to funders their capacity to deliver projects.
6. Use of minimum eligibility criteria
Common eligibility criteria used by funders and investors include an organisation’s track record, past grants received, or evidence of its size such as employee numbers. These can exclude refugee-led organisations with small budgets, relying on in-kind support and informally-employed staff. Criteria may be unrealistic, or simply impossible – as when refugees are required to provide collateral by lenders, but are legally barred from owning the land or property required to do so. Many grant and investment-making organisations have not consulted with refugees about their criteria, including funders whose programmes are explicitly created to help displaced people. Refugee-led organisations also find their business is too small to meet the minimum procurement criteria of humanitarian agencies. Compounding the problem, agencies often buy goods and services from external suppliers – these are given to camp residents for free, which can be detrimental to market opportunities for refugee-led enterprises.
7. Focus on grants over other forms of financial support
Grants are widely used and understood by humanitarian NGOs, and by refugee-led organisations. However, these funds are typically structured with specific criteria, chosen to address problems defined by the donor or other external stakeholders. Grants are usually allocated for defined projects over a limited time, with disbursements made against milestones or deliverables. They often do not include ‘technical assistance’ such as training on financial management or use of particular technologies, or support in developing an organisations governance structures. This assistance is vital to the growth and long-term sustainability of refugee led-organisations, particularly given the complexity of many energy projects. Organisations are eager to recieve alternative financial support, particularly direct investments such as equity, revenue share agreements and low cost loans, but these are less widely available than grants.
Unlocking finance and impact: practical steps for funders and partners
1. Adopt a refugee-centred approach to sustainable energy delivery
- Design sustainable, impactful programmes and funding by examining the technologies and services that refugee entrepreneurs are already providing. This will show where there is genuine local demand.
- Encourage local NGOs to buy goods and services from refugee-led organisations rather than sourcing them from external providers.
2. Make application processes accessible to refugee-led organisations
- Involve established refugee-led organisations as you design application processes – their experiences and inputs will help to create more accessible and inclusive systems.
- Create light touch processes to start an application, and only ask for more detail if there is a realistic chance that the application will be taken forward. Learn from UNHCR’s Refugee-Led Innovation Fund, which information the first stage of its applications in a variety of languages and media, with staff available to support applicants to develop proposals if they advance to later stages.
- Visit organisations to understand the work they do, which may not be fully conveyed by written proposals. Get references from local partners if your own team cannot see the work in person.
- Encourage applicants to partner with refugee-led organisations as sub-grantees, to enable them to build up a track record in grant holding. Learn from innovations in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp, where SNV has provided finance to refugee-led organisations that don’t meet eligibility requirements via ‘hosting’ arrangements with other local NGOs.
3. Create tailored financing initiatives
- Address the absence of funding mechanisms specifically for refugee-led clean energy initiatives, working to build markets through development programmes, funding opportunities and technical support targeted to these projects.
- Support community-led design and public-private partnerships as a means of localising energy delivery in displacement settings. Learn from Last Mile Climate’s solar electric cooking partnership, which will work with refugee-led organisations on market building activities for clean energy products, and empower some to act as distributors in their own community.
One such organisation is Uganda’s African Youth Action Network, which will demonstrate Ecoca cookers to residents in Bidibidi refugee settlement. The cookers are made by refugees in the camp, eliminate fuel costs, and thanks to micro-finance options can be paid for in installments over 12 to 24 months. African Youth Action Network will start by working with 50 households to pilot the stoves and micro-finance scheme, building demand in the community.
- Allocate specific amounts within programme budgets to be spent through refugee-led organisations. Set targets for the numbers of suppliers, contractors or beneficiaries engaged from refugee communities.
4. Build in technical assistance and in-kind support to financing initiatives
- Connect refugee-led organisations with training and technical assistance providers, such as Inkomoko, as part of your funding and programming. Some will also offer financing. Do the same with can offer mentorship and technical support.
- Explore how joint ventures can draw on an external partners’ technical expertise for design and construction, and a refugee-led organisation’s community knowledge for customer care, operation and maintenance. A good example is the partnership between Renewvia and Okapi Green Energy.
- Create finance mechanisms that enable market-based approaches, such as repayable grants, revenue share agreements and low-interest loans, to enable refugee-led organisations to move away from dependency on grants build a stronger financial track record.
- Support local organisations to learn about relevant technologies that could help them supply affordable clean energy to displaced people, by providing funding for them to attend industry events and knowledge exchange visits.
5. Build or support supply-side and demand-side initiatives:
- Create programmes and financial support that take end-user financing into account, even if the fund itself does not provide this. Where possible, programmes should enable or draw on refugee-centred initiatives to grow local markets and increase purchasing power. These might include village savings and loan associations, and micro-finance institutions. Learn from the work of Uganda’s refugee-founded Patapia, who offer refugees loans specifically for clean energy products. More directly, supply-side financing can empower refugee-led organisations to achieve economies of scale and provide more affordable products and services.
- Support innovative market-building approaches which leverage existing refugee savings and loans systems. One proven model sees a funder enable refugee-led organisations to buy manual briquette presses, used to make sustainable cooking fuel. These presses are in turn bought by local community groups, with support from village savings and loan associations. Groups use the equipment to raise incomes while tackling air pollution and deforestation.
This material was funded with UK aid from the UK government via the Transforming Energy Access programme, however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.
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By acting on these recommendations, funders and others in the humanitarian sector can dramatically boost the growth of refugee-led clean energy initiatives.
These inclusive solutions deliver a wealth of benefits, from higher incomes to better health. Supporting them will speed progress towards development goals, and some of the world’s most marginalised people.
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Isona Shibata – Head of International Programmes