Refugee Markets Brief: The power of markets to support refugee economic opportunities in West Nile, Uganda
With Uganda now home to over one million South Sudanese refugees, aid actors in the country’s West Nile region are looking for sustainable strategies to help individuals cope and recover. As refugees prepare for many years of displacement, spending is fueling growth in local marketplaces, and Uganda’s stable context provides opportunities to strengthen West Nile’s weak livelihood markets. Yet many current aid strategies undermine, rather than support, local markets’ capacity to support refugees.
The brief calls for a transition away from in-kind aid for food and livelihoods to an approach that emphasizes partnerships with local businesses, reductions of subsidies and demand-driven, market-based, livelihoods support. This shift requires a combination of market systems development and humanitarian expertise, longer-term funding strategies to strengthen local markets, and investments to understand long-run program impacts on markets and households.
