By Utkarsh Kiri

There are over 120 million displaced people in the world as at 2024, almost 2 million of whom are in Uganda alone. Displacement is often associated with a significant strain on government and aid resources. On the flip side, it’s also an inspiring story of hope and resilience; displaced people build homes, livelihoods, and communities in a completely new country, in turn adding to the rich tapestry of cultures, languages, foods, and ways of life in the country. 

Jobtech platforms operating in countries where displacement is significant are also faced with an interesting question: should we consider displaced people in our operations? And if so, how?

Here at the Jobtech Alliance, and in the refugee space overall, we’ve been saying that the inclusion of refugees into a platform isn’t just good for social impact – it makes plain business sense. If true, there is benefit for all parties: platforms tapping into new revenue streams and/or talent pools, refugees with meaningful work, impact partners with better livelihood outcomes (and a potentially better and leaner alternative to cash grants for the same). 

However, the concept is still relatively nascent, and there is a lack of concrete examples or shared language around the concept of business case for refugee inclusion. 

This blog attempts to dimensionalise what we mean by the ‘business case for refugee inclusion’.

A framework for the ‘business case for refugee inclusion‘

When we talk about refugee inclusion, the first step is to be clear about who we’re including and where. Refugee inclusion in the jobtech sector could take on at least three forms:

1. Workers (e.g., a ride-hailing platform onboarding refugee motorbike drivers)
2. Customer(e.g., an edtech platform targeting refugees as buyers/users of its service)
3. Hybrid (e.g., a platform selling fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) stock to mom-and-pop shops onboarding refugee agents to convert refugee-owned shops into clients)

The business case for refugee inclusion thus comes in different shapes and sizes across platforms, business models, and even industries. While some platforms could incidentally engage refugees without targeting them (Netflix likely has refugees subscribing), when we talk about the business case for refugees, we’re looking at the incremental value provided to a business from intentionally onboarding a refugee client, worker, or both.

To understand why and how the strength of the business case for refugee inclusion varies across platforms, business models and industries, it’s helpful to categorise the three major types of incremental value we’re talking about:

1. Market opportunity: This occurs when refugees are not currently customers/workers, but could become customers/workers if targeted, thus expanding the platform’s total addressable market
2. Operational or performance efficiencies: This occurs when platforms can improve performance or cost-effectiveness by engaging refugees. For example, where refugees may have unique skillsets, and/or where refugees may have reduced turnover because of limited alternatives.
3. Strategic advantage: This occurs where a platform benefits from unique competitive advantage from engaging refugees. For example, companies with social recruitment policies may prefer to engage an outsourcing provider which includes refugee talent.

While platforms could have a strong business case for investing in refugees, these domains could demonstrate negative return on investment by targeting refugees.

	Market Opportunity	Operational or performance efficiencies	Strategic Advantage
Likely high return on investment	Refugee market has demand for the platform’s offering which is the same or more than the host community’s, but is not reached by existing operations.	Refugees have unique skills and/or behaviours (eg. lower churn) which make them more likely to be high performers. Refugee geographies offer unique efficiencies.	Service buyers are more likely to consume with refugee presence (e.g., impact sourcing)
Likely low return on investment	Market is already saturated without the need for participation from refugees – onboarding refugees may even cannibalise existing sales. Refugees are less willing / able to pay for the service.	Engaging refugees involves higher friction than other users (e.g., language barriers, regulatory constraints, etc.)	Commoditised products/services where worker/client identity is irrelevant (e.g., ride-hailing, food delivery)

Without a good understanding of where the business case for refugee engagement lies, we risk investing in initiatives to onboard refugees that have a weak likelihood of success and/or sustainability. Let’s apply this framework to a few examples to demonstrate how it works:

Example 1 – EqualReach

EqualReach (a portfolio company at the Jobtech Alliance) is a digital work agency that connects refugee talent with remote job opportunities. Using the framework, EqualReach falls into the high business case category. Refugee inclusion is core to the company’s competitive advantage in a highly competitive market:

• High market opportunity: EqualReach is tapping into a largely underserved talent pool through digital remote work, given systemic barriers to traditional employment.
• Moderate operational/performance efficiency: For the same reasons as above, digital remote work may afford lower churn, given the relatively lack of alternative opportunities for these highly-skilled individuals. They also possess linguistic skills which afford the ability to work with different clients.
• High strategic advantage: EqualReach presents itself as an impact sourcing partner, benefitting from an “impact premium” where the refugee participation gives EqualReach an edge over other similar digital work agencies in terms of price and likelihood of being chosen for a project. 

Example 2 – Motorbike-hailing industry

The ride-hailing industry provides an interesting case for evaluating the business case for refugee inclusion as riders, as refugees and migrants represent large proportions of riders in various countries such as in Colombia where an estimated 70% of riders are migrants. While the context in Latin America benefits from particular market opportunity (refugees are equipped for roles that locals are less interested in) and operational efficiencies (network effects exist in recruiting from Spanish-speaking migrant groups), the same does not apply to quite the same extent in the Ugandan context:

• Moderate market opportunity: Onboarding refugees helps marginally expand the workforce, which can be valuable for ride-hailing platforms limited by labour supply. 
• Low operational efficiency: Refugees hypothetically represent a lower-churn workforce (a major problem for many ride-hailing platforms today), but refugees in Uganda often lack the necessary local motorbike licenses and some face language barriers.
• Low strategic advantage: Ride-hailing is largely a commoditised service; the identity of the customer and worker (e.g., the ‘refugee label’) does not significantly influence user preference, trust or perceived product value. Mistrust of some refugee groups from the population could even lead to a disincentive for platforms to onboard refugees.

Using the framework, ride-hailing platforms would fall under the low-moderate business case category. There is some incentive to onboard refugee drivers (expanding the workforce, potential for lower churn), but no strong differentiator that makes this a competitive priority over onboarding local drivers.

Example 3 – Digital FMCG Retail Apps

As we will cover in an upcoming learning study, we have seen that platforms seeking to digitize micro-enterprises in the FMCG retail space – through stock provision at competitive prices with guaranteed next-day delivery (often with a buy-now-pay-later operational model) – can offer a particularly strong business case for refugee engagement:

• High market opportunity: Refugees have a significant presence in the retail space, yet have relatively weak engagement in the traditional FMCG supply chain; they typically are ‘ripped off’ by traditional wholesalers and have less visibility into which products sell with the host community. Moreover, female owners of some communities struggle to travel, making delivery options particularly appealing.
• Moderate Operational/Performance efficiencies: While refugee micro-enterprises are fairly excluded from traditional outreach markets, and do likely need targeted outreach, they can be efficiently engaged as a market segment by engaging agents from the refugee community to onboard refugees.
• Low-Moderate strategic advantage: While currently low strategic advantage, there is a potential for these platforms to engage with the refugee-response community to gain access to grant- or subsidy-funding.

Applying business case analysis to market inclusion activities

While the best intentions may seek to integrate refugees into all private sector initiatives, the potential of those initiatives to succeed, scale, and be sustained will be constrained by the business case of integrating refugees into those business models. The first of these components – market opportunity – is likely to be the most important, as we regularly say at the Jobtech Alliance, demand is everything. We believe that applying a thoughtful framework which considers the fundamental business case will allow for private sector engagement activities with a greater chance of success. 

Where does your platform fit on this framework? What has your experience been with including refugee talent and/ or customers on your platform? Let us know by getting in touch!

The author is a Venture Building Extern at the Jobtech Alliance