Community Ownership in Rwamwanja, Uganda - World Refugee Day Blog

At Xavier Project we are fully committed to promoting community ownership in the delivery of services and activities that lead to positive social change. This has become the accepted modus operandi in the development context, but it is still a way of working that is all too rare to see in an emergency or humanitarian context. 

Our plan is to prove through our partnerships with Community Based Organisations in refugee hosting areas that building the capacity of community leaders in forming their own vision for a better future is the most effective, the most sustainable and the most appropriate work that NGOs should be doing, even in an emergency context. 

Community ownership to us does not just mean tokenistic community participation in decision making, or recruitment of refugees and host community members to salaried positions. To give an example of what I mean I would like to provide a case study of Tomorrow Vijana, a CBO we helped launch in 2015. 

Tomorrow Vijana is made up of a group of Congolese refugees, whom we met teaching each other English under a tree in a remote corner of Rwamwanja Settlement in South West Uganda several years ago. Despite the challenging environment, the Tomorrow Vijana team had a clear vision as to how they wanted to play a role in delivering services. We were struck by their motivation and their resilience and we began a partnership that still remains strong. In 2016, we helped them raise £18,000 to construct a three classroom learning hub, complete with computers and solar power. This was only possible because the community contributed their own resources and people-power to the construction. It represents a bill that is far less than 50% of what it would have cost Xavier Project to build the hub ourselves using local companies. We have worked with Tomorrow Vijana consulting on their strategy, providing learning course content, assessment tools and access to funding. Now in 2019, Tomorrow Vijana are the main organisation providing services in their part of Rwamwanja, ranging from adult literacy, to English, basic computers, tailoring, savings and loans, and agriculture courses. Over 500 people per year, including numerous local Ugandans, complete courses in their hub and all data is disbursed to Xavier Project staff who support with analysis. 188 participants have graduated from adult literacy, 212 from basic computers. 66% of all participants have stated that the course helped them increase their income.  

Tomorrow Vijana cover their own running costs with centrally run enterprises, such as a tomato growing co-operative and a catering company. They still turn to Xavier Project for investment in strategic guidance and new ideas. Currently, these include the launch of the first minibus service in the refugee settlement, and a solar powered chicken egg incubator. In partnership with Tomorrow Vijana, Xavier Project have also launched a 23 acre farm on the periphery of Rwamwanja settlement. The farm will create local employment and training for 300 people per year, with trickle down effects on the productivity on all farmers in Rwamwanja. By experimenting in new crops and better post-harvest crop management the farm will open up new markets to all farmers and exploit opportunities all along the value chain. The tangible social changes in these examples are entirely owned by the community members themselves. In Rwamwanja you will not see any Xavier Project branding or sign of our presence aside from what we offer behind the scenes.

What excites me about watching Tomorrow Vijana grow their impact is that I know it will survive Xavier Project’s presence in Rwamwanja. Their work is far more effective than anything we could have done directly because they fully understand the problems faced by their communities, and with the right support they are best placed to settle on solutions. They can tap into existing community resources that none of us can know exist, let alone access. 

Aside from being effective and sustainable, this approach is also urgently needed. Since 2017 international budgets for supporting displaced people has gone down in real terms, while the number of people of concern has increased from 65 million to 68 million. Sadly, I believe this trend is going to continue. The implications of this are already being seen in drastically reduced scope of services to refugees, from education to healthcare to food handouts, leading inevitably to worsened living conditions. Only increased community ownership can tackle this trend in a way that enables refugee well-being to improve, and relations with the local host community to grow positively. In Uganda, where 1.2 million refugees are being hosted, this is a particularly fragile balance that must be found.

And this approach is the most appropriate, not just because it is effective and urgently needed, but because it enables refugees and the populations hosting them to envisage and realise a better future together. This achieves a sense of dignity for a population whose dignity and rights have been suppressed through the experience of forced displacement. Today, World Refugee Day, is the day to collectively reflect on what dignity for refugees really means, even if it means drastically changing the way a lot of us work. 

The Rwamwanja Farm 

Kampala to Nairobi by Road -borders / police / mechanics / hot tea and a very handy twig

“18,000 for a second hand part?? This isn’t even from a Defender or a Discovery it’s from a series ii meaning it’s definitely over 20 years old.”

I had heard one of the mates saying kumi na nne (14) under his breath and I used that to show that they were definitely ripping me off – I had been prepared to pay around 4k I said. This created some disapproving gasps among the spare parts dealers in Nakuru – this mzungu is offensive! 4k for a steering pump.

Look bro, this is genuine. If it doesn’t work bring it back and we will give you another one. I will sell it for 12,000 I’m not going any lower. My mechanic gave a nod that said this is what he would have expected to pay. The sun was dropping on my second day on the road between Kampala and Nairobi. I conceded.

The "miraculously to plan" part

Embarking on a road trip to Uganda with two toddlers in a 1993 Discovery seems a bit brash looking back, but everything went miraculously to plan until the last two days. My journey back, with its wide list of friends and foes, opened up new truths to me about the countries I have called home for seven years.

There were far more friends than foes and despite the challenges this is what warmed me the most.

Chris (just before his third birthday) and I set off at 6am from Kampala, trying to beat the Mukono traffic, which we did. He wide awake struck in the eyes by the sun bursting through Mabira forest in the East. The going was so much better than on the way, maybe because the lorry drivers were all still asleep. As soon as you are past Iganga it is a wonderful open road. I overtook a caravan of South African landrovers creeping at 70km on their journey across the continent – I guess one of them had a bust steering pump – ha!

Well they all overtook me a few minutes later when I was stopped for speeding doing 73km in a 50km zone by a patrol of four policewomen, all aged under 40. Surely, you should get zapped when you have properly entered the 50km zone? The footage shows me driving past the sign at 73km and immediately slowing down – OFFENCE! That will be 200,000 UGX to be paid in court, and there is no way you are leaving the country if you don’t pay. I don’t have that kind of money on me! I already changed all my money into Kenyan Shillings. You live in Kenya? You have married a Kenyan? That is your son? He’s a British or a Kenyan? Haha why didn’t you marry a Ugandan? You made a mistake! Look we won’t charge you this time just give us something for tea.

Friends or foe? Felt like friends by the end.

It was 9 so we dropped in on a typical Ugandan ‘hotel’ in Bugiri for something to eat. There happened to be a group of young boys walking past with juicy fresh watermelon so we stopped them and devoured some of that. The tea was brought out piping hot in those tin/enamel mugs and before I’d had a chance to blurt out a warning, Chris had picked his up and poured it all over his lap. There were real tears, which from Crocodile Chris means it must be serious. He tried telling people the story of the burning tea for days afterwards whenever there was a gap in adult conversations. The staff at the hotel were very sympathetic – the word “bambi” was definitely used.

Reaching the fork in the road where you choose Busia or Malaba border crossing was momentous because it marked the full circle of our Ugandan road trip – on the way in we had gone right towards Malaba/Tororo. We were heading towards Busia in record time, but anyone at this point, surely even the most hardened Somali truck drivers, must start getting butterflies in the stomach when they start wondering what hurdles the border crossing will throw at them. I get it when I’m on my own, but now I had two humans and a vehicle to get across the minefield.

On the way we had used a fixer called Oti. He has sweet eyes and a look of vulnerability which must be perfect for his job, You would never suspect he is pulling the wool over your eyes. But at the border everyone is a foe until proven otherwise. This time Oti told us there was a 1000 ksh charge for removing the car off the list on the Ugandan side – a fee I had never heard of which didn’t make sense to me. But when I eventually gave it to him (how long can you just look at those eyes saying “that seems strange”?) he waved it around and called his friends to help him with the process in a way that made me think ‘if this was a sly expense would he really be waving it around like that…?’. Well I found out later it is a sly expense Oti just doesn’t need to hide it.

The good thing with a fixer like Oti is he literally does everything for you – he even tells you where to park. I don’t know how fixerless people have a single clue where to park. He got everything stamped and picked up my log book which I honestly might have forgotten. But don’t trust a fixer to give you all the right prices - you have to negotiate on everything when it comes to the car. For example, we negotiated our Uganda Car Insurance premium from 12,000 ksh to 6,000 ksh with the insurance rep, even though he had already printed the sticker – how do you negotiate an insurance premium? It’s annoying. I would recommend using Oti rather than anyone else though, because he charges 1000 ksh for his fee rather than rumours of 3000 I have heard. +254721725487 just don’t assume that because I’ve given you his number and he has nice eyes that he is your friend. The difference in your life experience is crossing in under one hour vs taking five hours like a Dutch couple I met in Uganda who said they refused to use fixers – ever. You choose.

At immigration one of the border officials fast tracked our passports past a queue of bus trippers who were causing a fuss.

The rest of the trip to Kisumu was pretty friendly, we even had two police checks with pretty friendly policemen. We were in Kisumu in time for a late lunch with my sister in law and it seemed that the journey was going really well.

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The next morning we set off at 7am. We were accompanied by Chris’ grandmother and were to pick up his great aunt Betty an hour later. Again we were stopped by the cops and this time my mother in law was not wearing her seatbelt so we had a bit more chatting up to do. I think he was entirely confused by the demographic make-up of the car – two middle aged African women and a tiny point 5 boy being driven by a mzungu in a clapped out vehicle. This concerned him far more than the seatbelt. But we got off without a fine, which was friendly of him.

By the time we reached Londiani I was developing fantasies along the lines of “this journey really isn’t too bad, I reckon with a pint of coffee and some good music you could do Kampala-Nairobi in a day.” At Sachangwan it all went downhill. Suddenly the power steering was heavy and fluid was being loudly splattered against the tin of the bonnet. I pulled over immediately, where by chance there was a local petrol station, and a mechanic within waving distance. This village has seen more road deaths than any other in Africa I am sure. In December 2017 over a hundred people died during the month – not in one massive crash but in almost daily deadly crashes. 36 people died on New Year’s Eve alone. It is also the spot where in 2009, 113 people died in an instant when an oil tanker that had gone off-road exploded. I gave a thought to the friends who helped us here and the horrors they must have witnessed over the years. Checking out a broken steering pump must be small fry compared to the emergencies they must all have been called to.

The mechanic was a nice guy, though not a particularly good mechanic. He told me the pipe to the steering pump had a leak and all the power steering fluid had drained. As long as I didn’t mind driving a heavy wheel back to Nairobi I could just press on without power steering. This seemed fine to me as power steering is only important when you are three-point-turning. He also pointed me in the direction of some expertly crafted wicker chairs which we were to strap to our roof – apparently this is the only place in Kenya we could get them, and despite the breakdown I was determined to stick to my promise to Mama Chris of picking them up. Again the wicker chair manufacturers were incredibly friendly. They gave me a discount, took mpesa (without asking for the withdrawal charge as extra– a classic heist) and helped me strap them on the roof before calmly herding me back into the murderous traffic.

The reason Sachangwan to Salgaa is so dangerous is because it is 20km of 30% descent with twists and bends, plied hourly by every truck and vehicle in the country moving west-east across the continent. On the way down it is hard to resist putting your stead in neutral and coasting down, or even switching off the engine. If you have eight tonnes of goods behind you this doesn’t allow for much control when faced by a phalanx of overtaking matatus, subarus and prados. I would learn this later.

Finally we were at Salgaa after edging down the hill at 60kmph. And here the temperature gauge on my dashboard started freaking out. The battery light started flashing and my rev counter collapsed. I later worked out this was because my alternator wasn’t turning, but because my whole dashboard was going nuts I decided the temperature gauge was probably faulty too. But then then some lights came on which I doubt have raised their head since the car came out of the factory in 1993. They seemed to be warning of an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust so I thought it was time to have a look inside.

The fan belt had not been turning for perhaps 15km. We had massively overheated. The pulley on the steering pump had effectively come off and the belt was sitting idle on the fan and the alternator pulleys. We had 6km to go to Nakuru and we had no clue what to do. We called a friend of a friend who had used a mechanic in Nakuru and based on conflicting advice from numerous savants we decided it would be OK to edge on down the hill to the city. But we only made it about 500m before world war three lights came back on. By this time we could see Nakuru and it was downhill all the way so I turned off the engine – we were sitting on a go-cart. I was already used to the steering being heavy but suddenly having very heavy brakes is disconcerting. Luckily the police standing at the gateway into Nakuru didn’t notice that we had no engine running as we rolled past – perhaps they thought we had gone electric.

We rolled into the first petrol station, causing a man in an overall to step out of our way. He was holding a spanner and yes he was a mechanic. Whatever he had planned to do with his Sunday afternoon was immediately abandoned and for the next five hours he would have his head in our bonnet. Great guy – he’s called Malachi and if you are ever stuck in Nakuru give him a call. 0716797101.

We needed a new steering pump and the only place we would get one was the second hand spare parts dealers in the town centre. Much later it turned out  that it didn’t work but it was impossible to diagnose this without trying it as the issue was deep inside the pump. At least the bearings and pulleys were sound so the fan belt would work and the car would not overheat. Malachi worked hard all afternoon, helped occasionally by the security guards at the petrol station who didn’t seem to mind us taking up space on their plot for over five hours.

At 3pm I sent Chris home with his grandmother in a matatu and they were home before we left Nakuru at 6. Such a godsend having those elders with us, with their wisdom and patience. Betty and I finally set off when the sun was on its last legs, feeling trepidation about a drive in the dark.

Just 5km into the trip and the lights came on again. Due to the overheating, the plastic plug on the cooling system – the plug you remove to drain the coolant, had burst off and there was nothing to keep the coolant in. How do you use plastic on a system vulnerable to overheating? The pulleys were also starting to make some serious noises. This was going to be a long journey.

We tried everything to plug the coolant valve, desperate to not have to go back to Nakuru. I wrapped an earplug in gaffatape, but obviously the earplug melted. We tried strapping excessive amount of gaffatape around the valve but this didn’t last long. In the end Betty, who was actually a closet car connoisseur, found a twig on the floor which fitted perfectly in the hole and we rammed it in with a hammer. This worked! Betty was pretty proud of this for the rest of the journey. We had lost all the water we were carrying to the cooling system so we stopped at a few places so that Betty could ask for water. Everywhere we stopped people were willing to give us five litres to send us on our way and asked for nothing in return.

The foes on this leg of the journey were the police. You can imagine that my patience at this point had been thoroughly eroded, and the cardinal sin when dealing with the road cops is to lose your cool. They need to feel that they are the gracious ones giving you a free pass out of the goodness of their very good hearts. But when one of them started telling me my driving licence was frayed and that I had therefore committed an offence I found it impossible to employ the grovelling persona. Luckily he let me go but only after telling me that he was fed up of British people telling him what was right and wrong and that colonialism had ended a long time ago – I needed to wake up and stop being a colonialist. The next one stopped me because the chairs on the roof had been attached in a way that was “hazardous and a threat to human life”. FFS just let us get home.

The pulley friction was getting louder and louder, but if I kept at low revs and cruised on the down hills, the car felt like a wounded horse with an arrow in its rump - it would get you to your destination but probably die later of gangrene. I didn’t mind when it died as long as we got home, which we finally did at 10pm, 15 hours after leaving Kisumu.

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I only managed to take one picture during this journey and here it is. That's Malachi and Aunty Betty and you can just about make out the "hazardous" chairs on the roof. 

A few days later in Nairobi I bought a new steering pump and sent the old one back to Nakuru for Malachi to fix. He claims he has done so and I have it back now, so if anyone needs a second hand steering pump for TDI 300 I have one, going for just 12,000 ksh. 

Blending Objectives between Humanitarian Actors and the Private Sector in Refugee Hosting Areas

Over the last thirty years, Kakuma, which hosts one of Africa’s largest refugee camps has grown from a tiny settlement to a medium sized city. But the economy has not had a chance to develop normally. This is because the economy has developed under the umbrella of international aid while trying to satisfy an increasing labour force, growing consumer market and growing productivity. Humanitarian and development agencies have fuelled growth, but at the same time left the market unpredictable and inorganic.

The humanitarian community first came to Kakuma with the sole purpose of protecting the refugees. The mandate of UNHCR, the agency leading and co-ordinating majority of the humanitarian interventions in the region is still primarily considered a protection agency. It is important to note that Kakuma is still rightly considered to be an emergency context and in any such context, there are populations that require protection first before any other form of integrated development.

However, while Kakuma finds itself in an emergency context, it is also now a severely protracted displacement situation. A while ago humanitarian agencies began planning for the people who live in Kakuma to start living lives like everyone else around the world. That is, assuming that if Kakuma is a vibrant town, then the living standards should improve and grow in line with other urban settlements around the world.

In an open market, innovators try to make lives better for everyone through their interventions and investments and generate a range of rewards for themselves at the same time. In the last five years the humanitarian community has begun to sell the idea on a global level that with the right kind of investment, the private sector could improve the living conditions in Kakuma through commercially viable enterprises. The basis for this is that Kakuma and its environs are inhabited by around 300,000 people who are either directly or indirectly engaged in its local economy. Most of the inhabitants have a vested interest in the integrated development of the locality.

Recent studies on economic opportunities available in Kakuma and Kalobeyei say that predictable and organic economic growth in Kakuma will be based on the availability of natural resources in combination with the huge potential in the labour force. Agriculture and high labour intensity industries will leverage off these factors. Successful enterprises will include a combination of both, such as value-adding to agricultural products. Examples of this include tanneries using livestock hides and designing leather products, or tinning locally grown vegetables such as peas and tinned tomatoes. These enterprises will become opportunities for refugees to increase their incomes and eventually become self-reliant and contribute to the host country economy. There are already numerous examples of refugees breaking through economic barriers, supporting themselves and their families with home-grown businesses, and participating in the growth of the local economy.

According to UNHCR and the academic studies, the private sector should be ready and willing to invest in both the consumer market as well as productivity in Kakuma and Kalobeyei. However, so far, the private sector has not really taken up this call and almost no deeply researched investment-ready business plans have been outlined that take into account the distortions and challenges present within Kakuma’s economy as a result of the town and camp’s inorganic, aid-dependent growth.

Kakuma’s story is being played out around the region, such as in Uganda and Rwanda where refugees have freedom of movement, freedom to work and in most cases have been provided with land that offers more in the way of productivity than Kakuma’s. Yet private sector investors have been slow to invest in refugee hosting areas and site numerous barriers to doing business there. Firstly, distorted economies have led to complicated power dynamics, with examples of local actors monopolising services and setting up cartels. Local administrative leaders hold an unusual interest in business going on in refugee settlements because of the power they hold over physical access to the space, both of refugees and investors. Secondly, they site need for large scale investments that will improve ease of doing business in refugee hosting areas. Large scale irrigation schemes, access to power, and improved roads are examples of this. Refugee hosting areas are generally very remote and far from existing import/export hubs or major commercial centres. Connected to this third reason sited is that while refugee hosting areas might be commercially viable, the private sector looks at the most commercially viable location for any given project when making investment decisions. On that basis refugee hosting areas must put forth a comparative advantage over other locations in the region and this is often difficult. A fourth reason is connected with the workforce. After taking into account all of the above, the private sector fear that refugee population does not have the requisite skill levels to engage in business and more alarmingly, that after decades of a dependency culture they will lack the motivation needed for successful enterprise.

To address these barriers the humanitarian sector will continue to play a role, beyond that of providing protection. While the national governments take on more responsibility for refugee hosting areas, there is a need for streamlined lobbying for more transparent power dynamics within refugee hosting areas. The humanitarian community, using organic business growth success stories as examples, will be the key player advocating for these large scale investments. Moreover, the humanitarian community will still be relied on to educate and prepare the population with skills that respond to the demands of the emerging organic economy.

Most importantly, thorough business plans will have to be conducted taking into account these barriers not just focusing on the opportunities. We have found that deeply researched business plans bring out these barriers clearly without providing concrete answers to how to reduce the barriers in the short term. The barriers are complex and so instead these business plans must lay out a range of strategies that may or may not be successful, and an approach of design, iteration and analysis.

In this context any company, implementer or investor going into a refugee hosting area should have a long term view and an eye for blended outcomes between pure market-based opportunities while still learning and playing the role of protecting and building the capacity of the vulnerable population. We have found that investors who support this approach exist, but to bring them in the language has to change from diving straight in with the “commercial viability” narrative. A community of actors who can build the dialogue between the protection focused humanitarian sector and the commercially focused private sector has been the missing piece until now. There is an emerging group of agencies, companies and investors willing to play this role and I believe the time has come to bring them together so that they can greater understand the role they play and path to achieving success. This could possibly take the form of a network or working group, a series of conferences or meet-ups, and alliance of like-minded actors, or even a tightly-knit consortium. Any thoughts welcome.

A Transparent Cryptocurrency for Development / Humanitarian Funding?

2017 was the year in which Bitcoin became mainstream, and my grandmother and delivery man started talking about it. (Not literally – my grandmother turns her TV off at the wall because she’s afraid of the remote control – it’s an English idiom). As a teacher/NGO worker I’m not an expert on cryptocurrency but I watch the Blockchain TED talks and have done my share of guessing who Satoshi Nakamoto might be.

Those of you who know more might be able to help me on an idea I have that could be applied to the non-profit sector, to see if it is in the pipeline already or has serious pitfalls. I know that people in the industry are experimenting with how Ethereum and Bitcoin could be used in humanitarian funding, but I'm not convinced they are the best currencies for it.

There are now literally thousands of cryptocurrencies, each with different attributes. Nearly all are based in some way on the concept of the blockchain ledger. Many have gained market value through selling points such as fast transactions times, anonymity and being under the radar of regulation.  Coins have gained their own value against the dollar and as such have become investment opportunities – for better or worse.

Due to the ledger system everyone using the system would have access to the entire history of that currency if it wasn’t for encryption - but for every coin I have found so far the system has ingenious ways of encrypting this information so that it is hidden and unhackable. This makes sense –for a large crypto currency it would not be beneficial for everyone on the ledger to be able to see the details of every transaction ever made using that currency. We should sometimes be free to make payments without other people knowing. What if we want to give an anonymous donation, tip someone, or buy cream for athlete’s foot?

But is there a currency that can make sections or chains of the ledger completely open and transparent? Let’s call the potential coin altcoin, since there is probably an altcoin that does this, and give a few examples of how this could be beneficial.

·         A small savings group in a community (SACCO) convert their fiat currency into altcoin and all transactions are done on an open ledger, including loans and repayments. Accounting is no longer necessary as every transaction is visible to anyone who wants to look.

·         An agency like Xavier Project wants to raise funds to build a classroom. We launch an appeal requesting altcoin from our donors. The donors donate altcoin into our altcoin wallet and the transactions go onto the ledger. We procure contractors who all demonstrate that they use altcoin in their transactions. We pay the contractors to build the classroom in altcoin and they pay their staff and buy supplies using altcoin. The original donors are able to see every transaction, and really see how much Xavier Project and the contractor are keeping as their cut.

·         Imagine the benefit of this where there are multiple layers of donors, contractors and subcontractors. The cement supplier in the example above gets his funds from the contractor, who gets her funds from Xavier Project, who get their funds from UNHCR, who get their funds from the US Government, who get their funds from US taxpayers. Donors would be able to see where their money is going, and as of now they would be able to see how much gets absorbed (wasted?) by intermediary agencies.

·         Donors could then be better informed as to where they are giving their money and the function of some intermediaries would be questioned. In the short term agencies and contractors offering this level of transparency would gain more support and grow rather than lose significance. In the longer term their role in transferring material value could fade. (XP would love this by the way – we could evolve to disbursing only intellectual value rather than material value, and let the material value flow directly from donor to beneficiary.)

·         Use of cryptocurrency in this value chain could reduce transaction costs to negligible amounts, which would be particularly significant with international transactions – up to 7% of the original donation amount could be saved.  

·         The open ledger system could also cut huge expenses for the agencies as they would need a far reduced finance team. Programme team members would no longer have to worry about getting receipts for every single payment, a job which is even more laborious than it sounds with all the accompanying paperwork that must go with it. Our full-time team spend at least 35% of their time on work surrounding transactions in some way. I would estimate that if we used an open ledger system across the organisation it could cut this down to 10% thus saving 25% of man-hours.

The channels and extent of openness would have to be made clear. The ideal may be to have “giving chains” hosted by an agency which is open to everyone on that giving chain. For example, if UNHCR wants to achieve outcomes of education for refugees, they set up an open giving chain on the ledger whereby everyone who gives or receives on that ledger can see the full ledger. Xavier Project could also host multiple giving chains that can be seen by everyone on that chain. The degree of openness could be a pre-requisite for contracting agencies or suppliers, so they will know how much they will be expected to share before they are selected, as will everyone else on that giving chain – so a level of anonymity or privacy at any stage can be an option as long as it is clear in advance.

One thing most actors on this value chain would fear, from donor, to institutional agency, to NGO to contractor, is the volatility of most crypto currencies at the moment. I don’t see this changing at least in the next decade.  Currently coins can lose or gain 50% of their value in day. Therefore the best altcoin for this concept would be one which is pegged to the US Dollar. There are several  examples of this such as Ziftr, CoinUSD and Nubit, but it seems the most successful one so far has been Tether. Tether has managed to maintain 1:1 USD value pretty much since its launch in 2015.

A pegged cryptocurrency would mean that if a donor buys said altcoin to donate to the chain of giving, it will not lose or gain value before it finally gets to the cement provider or labourer a few months later.

So what we need is a cryptocurrency that is pegged to the dollar and that has a ledger that can be transparent to varying degrees. Does it exist?

Xavier Project's Cultures

In my last blog I wrote about how important it is for an agency to have an identity as a team. This is a team of people who share a belief in a different future that they believe is possible to bring about. They share a belief in the best approaches that should be used to bring that future about. These approaches can also just be cultures, or ways of behaving that unite a group of people into a team whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

At Xavier Project we are united by our core value, which is solidarity. I have written about solidarity in the past in this blog http://odieromondi.blogspot.co.ke/2015/08/solidarity-xavier-projects-core-value.html. Our core value permeates all our cultures and approaches but we also focus on three pillars that summarise our organisational cultures. These are “open”, “cohesive” and “pioneering”. We chose them because these are  words that other people use to describe us, but we could also be a lot more open, cohesive and pioneering so we focus on them as cultures we would like to display more fully.

Open

The culture of being open is heavily inspired by our core value of solidarity, in that we can’t show solidarity with each other, with the refugees we work with and all other stake holders without being open. We are known for always having an open door to refugees and being accessible to people who need our help or want to partner with us. The word “open” also signifies our belief that societies around the world should be more open to refugees fleeing conflicts, famines or extreme poverty – the phrase open doors therefore has a twin meaning for us.

However, the culture of being open has implication at other levels as well. We have been congratulated by donors for the transparency in our reporting and the accuracy in our financial accounting. We are also keen to be open-minded to new ideas and ready to listen to anyone’s ideas of how to be more creative, be they full-time team members or others.

Cohesive

The culture of cohesion is inspired by the ideas in my last blog about “agency” http://odieromondi.blogspot.co.ke/2017/08/on-agency.html . It is vital that a team should be united in its vision and way of doing things if it wants to make a change and we foster a culture of focusing on this cohesion within the team.  We have ways of doing things that we believe are the Xavier Project way, such as leading by example, communicating clearly and effectively, taking responsibility, and mentoring others in the team. But cohesion to us does not mean that we all need to be robots operating on identical lines of code – in fact as part of our culture of being one team with a shared vision we welcome diversity; diversity of opinions, diversity of background and diversity of individual ambitions. In fact more than welcome, we encourage team members to employ their individual flair in their programmes and urge people to pursue interests that might not immediately line-up with our work plan, whether during or outside of work hours.

Pioneering

In the long run this diversity gives us a team that has a far broader understanding of the core and the peripheries of the context we are working and a team that can come up with more colourful ways of addressing age-old problems. To be pioneering in the work we do we need to understand the gaps in our sector and the things that are being tried elsewhere that could work in our context. This means we all need to be willing to research and to learn. It means we have to accept we can be wrong, and ready to be flexible and adapt our programmes according to the need and to the potential. A great example of this is our Tamuka department. Tamuka means speak out in Swahili and in 2012 we opened Tamuka as a platform for refugees to speak out about the realities of their lives. It was an idea that came from the refugee community, but about a year after we launched we realised that refugees were more interested in using Tamuka to learn and to engage in their societies, not necessarily to use it as a platform to promote their rights. Today Tamuka has evolved into the department that runs the Community Enterprise Cycle as described here http://odieromondi.blogspot.co.ke/2017/01/xavier-projects-community-enterprise.html .

Most importantly, to be pioneering in our sector you need to be resilient knowing you will consistently come against barriers that seem to be unsurmountable and problems that appear to be infinitely complex. People have tried to solve these problems before and failed, so if we are to succeed we need to be radical. Being radical nearly always means you have to be unpopular with someone and it can be exhausting so you need a lot of energy. At Xavier Project we have come up with numerous radical ideas, such as our iGCSE project and our community run hubs, but a challenge with having a culture of always coming up with new ideas is that we need to be better at completing our ideas and seeing them all the way through to the  

Power and Fragile Peace

One of the deputy leaders stood up at the peace rally today and berated the previous speakers for not thanking the President first and before all other actors for the successes we were celebrating. It was because of his bravery as a warrior that we have peace in the country, we were told, and he has spread peace and continues to spread peace throughout the land.

Outside of East Africa our leaders are not given a great time in the press. Self-proclaimed “mature democracies” are full of scorn for countries where votes are bought, not cast based on policy, and often miscounted. They assume that because the current regime is corrupt the elections must have been rigged, because there is no way over 50% of the adult population would have chosen to keep a despot in power.

But they don’t see the drip-drip effect of propaganda that the majority of voters are fed. If they did, they would see that most people have been made to love the status quo, and, I believe, vote it back in with a legitimate majority, even taking into account the impact of blatant election rigging.

Everything today was framed into a hierarchical prism, and there was a constant feeling that this was all happening under the watchful and encouraging eye of the President. The minister for development in this province was the ‘guest of honour’ and left to speak last, but when he spoke he mainly deferred to the President and brought things back to how great things are because of him. In his light, we sang the national anthem twice (once at the beginning and once at the end), and presents were even donated to the minister, to take back to the President and his wife in the capital – as a thank you.

This may sound like it was contrived, but it was supported by various underlying layers of hierarchy, which acted as a prop to this ultimate Presidential hierarchy, and as such were no less significant. For example, the three hours of speeches, although made in the presence of the children and reformed warriors who should surely have been the audience, were made in English and literally addressed to the minister. When I say literally, I mean most speakers paused mid-sentence nearly every minute to say “guest of honour Mr Minister”. Naturally, the minister was given a special chair, right in the middle of the top table and was always served everything first. When he spoke, a solder stood behind him holding an umbrella to guard him from the sun – a privilege that was exclusively available to the minister, despite the soldier standing idle for most of the day.

The minister had to leave early, so the deputy I referred to at the beginning moved into the big chair and motioned everyone to his right to move on chair closer towards him- they had all just received a hierarchical promotion.

It is this worship of hierarchy, enacted without a hint of irony, that the hundreds of children present today witness on a daily basis. Of course, they very rarely if ever see the President, but if his representatives are treated this way, think what kind of a god he himself must be. He is important and as they are always told, it is because of him that there is peace and because of him that the road was tarmacked and the hospital built. It would take a lot to see through all that and question his ability to rule, or care about the rumours of cleptocracy – even if they ever hear them in the first place.

This is why they all vote for him. The question would be- who out of the officials believe this propaganda and who is acting out some self-preserving and self-promoting game? It’s hard to tell because in this tightly centralised power structure you have no choice but to play the tune if you want to stay in your coveted position of power.  However, after seeing it for myself I believe it is genuine here and this is something foreigners also don’t understand. This region has seen a lot of unrest in recent generations, and the strong leader has brought peace [did he arguably fuel or even cause the war in the first place? Topic for another day]. Looking at neighbouring countries it is too easy to see what can happen when the state is weak, and even in the model(ish) democracy next door, the state is too weak to control rampant crime, tribal conflict and land invasions. Development can only happen if there is peace, and it is only after realising how fragile peace is across the whole of East Africa and how horrific the opposite can be, that you appreciate it when it is there, however (un)democratically it may have been achieved. 

Kakumopolis

As we walked into the cramped office David from Vodafone Foundation told Jessy to turn on the air-con. She had been sitting in a room that could just about fit one person but she was sharing it with David and two large whirring servers that were contributing more to the heat than the sun above the tin roof. With us now in the room as well it was too crowded to close the door so I had cool air on one side of my face competing with the hot dusty air that occupies the rest of Kakuma Refugee Camp 365 days a year.

Jessy is a Congolese girl living in Kakuma Refugee Camp who learnt to code within a month and is now making money over the internet. Most people would be surprised by this on various levels but after spending time in Kakuma not many stories I hear about it surprise me anymore. Thousands of children have arrived unaccompanied in Kakuma (or the border reception post) in the last twenty years who have been walking for twenty days through waterless terrain.  Hearing their accounts it is impossible to understand how they survived. One of these survivors is now an athlete who just missed selection for the Olympics. When I met him he had achieved his current personal best of 1.04 in the half marathon, despite it being the first time he had run the exact distance. The world record is 58 minutes and he hopes to improve on his PB when he finally gets a pair of running shoes to replace his plimsolls. Another refugee girl, who had been learning in tents in severely overcrowded classrooms, recently scored high enough marks in her primary leaving exams to put her in the top 1% students in the entire country. So when David told us that Jessy had only been introduced to computers a couple of months earlier and had learnt to code within the last month I had no reason to doubt it. Kakuma draws in super-humans who do remarkable things that you can’t compare with the achievements of non-Kakuma muggles.

Yiech Pur Biel - Olympic 800m Runner from Kakuma

Kakuma should no longer be referred to as a camp of refuge, but a remote hotbed of bursting potential. Kakuma will always be hot, but will it always be remote? Sure it is in the middle of nowhere, but so were Nairobi and Milton Keynes not so long ago. Kakuma has a population of 185,000 people with varying degrees of super-human powers and a teenage median age. For them Kakuma is the centre of their world and they will make it what they want it to be, and one day the rest of the world will wake up to what that means and come knocking for a piece of it. Blink and you will miss the dawn of the Kakumopolis.

Back to the real world - currently, the economy of Kakuma is weak and distorted. The three traditional sources of external income for the camp include in-flows from NGO’s and intergovernmental agencies, remittances from relatives abroad, and trading between refugees and the local Turkhana tribe as well as truckers on their way to South Sudan. This income then revolves around the camp making some people quite successful through retail, services and other forms of internal commerce. Cash goes out as imports come in and quality of life improves – a bit.

NGO’s are the biggest employer of refugees in the camp, employing 27% of all refugees who claimed to have employment (including self-employment). This may sound good but they all pay a universally accepted $60 per month per person, and each refugee is only allowed one such job at a time for fear of being black-listed by all the agencies.

M-pesa agents in Kakuma estimate that 100,000 – 150,000 USD per month is received in Kakuma from remittances abroad. This is good and there is an element of filtering down and around of that money, but it gives some an unfair advantage and distorts natural competition.

Having 185,000 people in one place inevitably means that there are skills and services available for locals or people passing through. A good example is hair and beauty services – there are a number of famous salons in Kakuma that are used by many non-refugees. Nine out of ten of the abattoirs in the region are in Kakuma refugee camp, and Turkana bring their livestock from far and wide to be slaughtered and butchered. However, Turkana is the poorest county in Kenya with over 50% of the population living in extreme poverty (under $1.25 per day) and with a population density of 11 people per square km tapping into Turkana’s economy is not going to bring about Kakumopolis any time soon.

So as it stands, the median income for families in Kakuma camp is $73 per week, with typical families spending almost $20 per week on food and almost $15 servicing debts. The levels of poverty faced by households in Kakuma can be seen in the behaviour of 43% of families who employ immediately harmful coping mechanisms such as spending entire days without eating, and 57% of families who employ potentially harmful coping mechanisms such as taking out loans with interest to pay for food.

However, there are opportunities for the economy of Kakuma to become more efficient and more integrated with external markets and start its long journey towards Kakumopolis. For refugees to benefit from this integration the education they receive must be more relevant to the skills needed for sustainable livelihoods. Since access to formal education remains a significant obstacle, alternative forms of education need to link refugees with these opportunities more directly (this is where Xavier Project comes in).

A report carried out by Samuel Hall on behalf of UNHCR implementing partners, DRA and AAH has identified various opportunities and laid out recommendations for exploring them.^[1] For example, the report states that too many products are imported into the camp (such as desks) that could be produced in the camp if refugees were equipped with the relevant skills in a more economically efficient way. It gives examples of exports from the camp, such as animal hides, that could yield higher profits if refugees were better trained and equipped to add value to these products before they left the camp. It suggests that better access to capital might facilitate this. Finally, it identifies various ways in which refugees can link with external markets, including online markets. A report by AMGlobal Consulting on Telework for refugee communities outlines current organisations promoting telework opportunities for refugees and recognises best practices.^[2] Jessy Inga may not know it but she marks the beginning of an era of Kakuma generating income through external markets via the internet.

Kakuma Refugees: Connected

Based on these findings and recommendations Xavier Project hopes to launch an innovative plan based on a community-run hub concept; a concept that we have been developing since 2012 in Nairobi and Kampala that will reduce poverty amongst refugees and enable refugees to live dignified lives while contributing positively to Kenya’s economy. It’s known as the Community Enterprise Cycle and is based on the premise that refugee run education and enterprise will lead to refugees engaging in their new communities and integrating in new markets. People like Jessy will not only be able to scale their own successes, but they will rely on the resources available in their own community to succeed and amplify their social impact in the process and the cycle will continue. On the current trajectory, refugees in Kakuma, through their industriousness and natural talent will tap into global gaps and become world leaders in niche areas that we cannot yet predict. They will be bringing income into the country and creating employment. Will Kenya still refer to this new Kakuma as a burden on their society, or an asset?

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^[1] Samuel Hall Comprehensive Market Assessment for Kakuma Refugee Programmes 2016. Data on livelihoods in this section was taken from this report.

^[2] AMGlobal Telework and Opportunity: Approaches to Employment in Refugee Camps and other Underserved Populations January 2016